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^\)t M\)tmnt literature ^ttm 



SELECTIONS 

FROM THE WORKS OF 

JOHN RUSKIN 



EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND 
NOTES BY 

CHAUNCEY B. TINKER, Ph.D. 

Assistant Professor of English in Yale College 




HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

Boston : 4 Park Street ; New York : 85 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago : 378-388 Wabash Avenue 

(Cbe 0i\Jcr0iOE ^xtss Cambridge 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

OCT 30 1908 

Copyright tntry 

CLASS O^ XXc, No, 

COPY S. 






COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



. ^^ ••• 

PREFACE 

In making the following selections, I have tried to avoid 
the appearance of such a volume as used to be entitled 
Elegant Extracts. Wherever practicable, entire chapters or 
lectures are given, or at least passages of sufficient length 
to insure a correct notion of the general complexion of Rus- 
kin's work. The text is in all cases that of the first editions, 
unless these were later revised by Ruskin himself. The 
original spelling and punctuation are preserved, but a few 
minor changes have been made for the sake of uniformity 
among the various extracts. For similar reasons, Ruskin's 
numbering of paragraphs is dispensed with. 

I have aimed not to multiply notes. Practically all Rus- 
kin's own annotation is given, with the exception of one or 
two very long and somewhat irrelevant notes from Stones 
of Venice. It has not been deemed necessary to give the 
dates of every painter or to explain every geographical refer- 
ence. On the other hand, the sources of most of the quota- 
tions are indicated. In the preparation of these notes, the 
magnificent library edition of Messrs. Cook and Wedder- 
burn has inevitably been of considerable assistance; but all 
their references have been verified, many errors have been 
corrected, and much has of course been added. 

In closing I wish to express my obligation to my former 
colleague. Dr. Lucius H. Holt, without whose assistance 
this volume would never have appeared. He wrote a num- 
ber of the notes, including the short prefaces to the various 
selections, and prepared the manuscript for the printer. 

C. B. T. 

September, 1908. 



CONTENTS 

Introduction vii 

The Life of Ruskin ....... vii 

The Unity of Ruskin's Writings .... xi 

Ruskin's Style xiv 

Selections from Modern Painters 

The Earth- Veil 2 

The Mountain Glory 8 

Sunrise on the Alps 17 

The Grand Style 20 

Of Realization 39 

Of the Novelty of Landscape 48 

Of the Pathetic Fallacy 58 

Of Classical Landscape ...... 76 

Of Modern Landscape 105 

The Two Boyhoods 120 

Selections from The Stones of Venice 

The Throne 138 

St. Mark's 150 

Characteristics of Gothic Architecture . . . 164 

Selections from The Seven Lamps of Architecture 

The Lamp of Memory 200 

The Lamp of Obedience 221 

Selections from Lectures on Art 

Inaugural . 233 

The Relation of Art to Morals 248 

The Relation of Art to Use 257 



vi CONTENTS 

Art and History 269 

Traffic 277 

Life and its Arts 305 

Bibliographical Note 329 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

/ 
Portrait of Ruskin Frontispiece 

Turner's Fighting Temeraire ... 126' 

Church of St. Mark, Venice ..... 150 

St. Mark's : Central Arch of Faqade . . . 162 



INTRODUCTION 

It is distinctive of the nineteenth century that in its pas- 
sion for criticising everything in heaven and earth it by no 
means spared to criticise itself. Alike in Carlyle's fulmi- 
nations against its insincerity, in Arnold's nice ridicule of 
Philistinism, and in Ruskin's repudiation of everything 
modern, we detect that fine dissatisfaction with the age 
which is perhaps only proof of its idealistic trend. For 
the various ills of society, each of these men had his pan- 
acea. What Carlyle had found in hero-worship and Arnold 
in Hellenic culture, Ruskin sought in the study of art; and 
it is of the last importance to remember that 
throughout his work he regarded himself not meting 
merely as a writer on painting or buildings or tendencies 
myths or landscape, but as the appointed critic 
of the age. For there existed in him, side by side with his 
consuming love of the beautiful, a rigorous Puritanism 
which was constantly correcting any tendency toward a mere 
cult of the aesthetic. It is with the interaction of these two 
forces that any study of the life and writings of Ruskin 
should be primarily concerned. 



I 

THE LIFE OF RUSKIN 

It is easy to trace in the life of Ruskin these two forces 
tending respectively toward the love of beauty and toward 
the contempt of mere beauty. They are, indeed, present 
from the beginning. He inherited from his Scotch parents 
that upright fearlessness which has always char- 
acterized the race. His stern mother " devoted 
him to God before he was born," ^ and she guarded her 
gift with unremitting but perhaps misguided caution. The 

1 Prceterita. He was born February 8, 1819. 



viii INTRODUCTION 

child was early taught to find most of his entertainment 
within himself, and when he did not, he was whipped. He 
had no playmates and few toys. His chief story-book was 
the Bible, which he read many times from cover to cover 
at his mother's knee. His father, the "perfectly honest 
wine-merchant," seems to have been the one to foster the 
boy's aesthetic sense; he was in the habit of reading aloud 
to his little family, and his son's apparently genuine ap- 
preciation of Scott, Pope, and Homer dates from the in- 
credibly early age of five. It was his father, also, to whom 
he owed his early acquaintance with the finest landscape, 
for the boy was his companion in yearly business trips about 
Britain, and later visited, in his parents' company, Belgium, 
western Germany, and the Alps. 

All this of course developed the child's precocity. He 
was early suffered and even encouraged to compose verses ; ^ 
by ten he had written a play, which has unfortunately been 
preserved. The hot-house rearing which his parents be- 
lieved in, and his facility in teaching himself, tended to 
make a regular course of schooling a mere annoyance ; such 
Early schooling as he had did not begin till he was 

education, fifteen, and lasted less than two years, and was 
broken by illness. But the chief effect of the sheltered 
life and advanced education to which he was subjected was 
to endow him with depth at the expense of breadth, and to 
deprive him of a possibly vulgar, but certainly healthy, 
contact with his kind, M^hich, one must believe, would have 
checked a certain disposition in him to egotism, sentimen- 
tality, and dogmatic vehemence. "The bridle and blinkers 
were never taken off me," he writes.^ 

At Oxford — whither his cautious mother pursued him 
— Buskin seems to have been impressed in no very es- 
Student sential manner by curriculum or college mates, 
at Oxford. With learning per se he was always dissatisfied 
and never had much to do ; his course was distinguished 
not so much by erudition as by culture. He easily won the 

1 Ruskin himself quotes a not very brilliant specimen in Modern 
Painters, III, in " Moral of Landscape." 

2 PrcBterita, § 53. 



INTRODUCTION ix 

Kewdigate prize in poetry ; his rooms in Christ Church 
were hung with excellent examples of Turner's landscapes, 
— the gift of his art-loving father, — of which he had been 
an intimate student ever since the age of thirteen. But his 
course was interrupted by an illness, apparently of a tuber- 
culous nature, which necessitated total relaxation and vari- 
ous trips in Italy and Switzerland, where he Traveling 
seems to have been healed by walking among in Europe, 
his beloved Alps. For many years thereafter he passed 
months of his time in these two countries, accompanied some- 
times by his parents and sometimes rather luxuriously, it 
seems, by valet and guide. 

Meanwhile he had commenced his career as author with 
the first volume of Modern Painters, begun, the world 
knows, as a short defense of Turner, originally career as 
intended for nothing more than a magazine an author 
article. But the role of art-critic and law-giver ^^ "^' 
pleased the youth, — he was only twenty-three when the 
volume appeared, — and having no desire to realize the 
ambition of his parents and become a bishop, and even less 
to duplicate his father's career as vintner, he gladly seized 
the opportunity thus offered him to develop his aesthetic 
vein and to redeem the public mind from its vulgar apathy 
thereby. He continued his work on Modern Pai7iters, with 
some intermissions, for eighteen years, and supplemented it 
with the equally famous Seven Lam.jps of Architecture in 
1849, and The Stones of Venice in 1853. 

This life of zealous work and brilliant recognition was 
interrupted in 1848 by E-uskin's amazing marriage to Miss 
Euphemia Gray, a union into which he entered at the 
desire of his parents with a docility as stupid as it was 
stupendous. Five years later the couple were quietly 
divorced, that Mrs. Ruskin might marry Mil- Domestic 
lais. All the author's biographers maintain an tro'i^les. 
indiscreet reserve in discussing the affair, but there can be 
no concealment of the fact that its effect upon Ruskin was 
profound in its depression. Experiences like this and his 
later sad passion for Miss La Touche at once presage and 
indicate his mental disorder, and no doubt had their share 



X INTRODUCTION 

— a large one — in causing Kuskin's dissatisfaction with 
everything, and above all with his own life and work. Be 
this as it may, it is at this time in the life of Ruskin that 
we must begin to reckon with the decline of his aesthetic 
and the rise of his ethical impulse ; his interest passes from 
art to conduct. It is also the period in which he began his 
career as lecturer, his chief interest being the social life of 
his age. 

By 1860, he was publishing the papers on political 
economy, later called Unto This Last, which roused so 
RusWn's great a storm of protest when they appeared in 
increasing the Cornhill 3fagazine that their publication had 
social ques- to be suspended. The attitude of the public toward 
tlons. such works as these, — its alternate excitement 

and apathy, — the death of his parents, combined with 
the distressing events mentioned above, darkened Rus- 
kin's life and spoiled his interest in everything that did not 
tend to make the national life more thoughtfully solemn. 

"It seems to me that now . . . the thoughts of the true 
nature of our life, and of its powers and responsibilities should 
present themselves with absolute sadness and sternness." * 

His lectures as Slade Professor of Art at Oxford, a post 
which he held at various times from 1870 to 1883, failed 
to re-establish his undistracted interest in things beautiful. 
The complete triumph of the reformer over the art- 
critic is marked by Fors Clavigera, a series of letters to 
workingmen, begun New Year's Day, 1871, in which it 
was proposed to establish a model colony of peasants, whose 
lives should be made simple, honest, happy, and even 
cultured, by a return to more primitive methods of tilling 
the soil and of making useful and beautiful objects. The 
Guild of St. George, established to ''slay the dragon of 
industrialism," to dispose of machinery, slums, and dis- 
content, consumed a large part of Ruskin's time 
the reform- and money. He had inherited a fortune of ap- 
er over the proximately a million dollars, and he now beeran 
art-critic. I ,. c -. ■ • i -^ i,i v 

to dispose of it in various charitable schemes, — 

establishing tea-shops, supporting young painters, planning 
1 The Mystery of Life. 



I 



INTRODUCTION xi 

model tenements, but, above all, in elaborating his ideas for 
the Guild. The result of it all — whatever particular reforms 
were effected or manual industries established — was, to 
Ruskin's view, failure, and his mind, weakening under the 
strain of its profound disappointments, at last crashed in 
ruin. 

It is needless to follow the broken author through the 
desolation of his closing years to his death in 1900. Save 
for his charming reminiscences, Prceterita, his Death in 
work was done ; the long struggle was over, the ^^°°- 
struggle of one man to reduce the complexities of a national 
life to an apostolic simplicity, to make it beautiful and 
good, 

Till the high God behold it from beyond, 

And enter it. 

II 

THE UNITY OF RUSKIN's WRITINGS 

Ruskin is often described as an author of bewildering 
variety, whose mind drifted waywardly from topic to topic 
— from painting to political economy, from ar- Diversity 
chitecture to agriculture — with a license as of his 
illogical as it was indiscriminating. To this im- ^" ^^' 
pression, Ruskin himself sometimes gave currency. He was, 
for illustration, once announced to lecture on crystallo- 
graphy, but, as we are informed by one present,^ he opened 
by asserting that he was really about to lecture on Cis- 
tercian architecture; nor did it greatly matter what the 
title was; *'for," said he, "if I had begun to speak about 
Cistercian abbeys, I should have been sure to get on crys- 
tals presently ; and if I had begun upon crystals, I should 
soon have drifted into architecture." Those who conceive 
of Ruskin as being thus a kind of literary Proteus like to 
point to the year 1860, that of the publication of his tracts 
on economics, as witnessing the greatest and suddenest of 

^ See Harrison's Life, p. 111. Cf. the opening- of The Mystery of 
Life. 



xii INTRODUCTION 

his changes, that from reforming art to reforming society ; 
and it is true that this year affords a simple dividing-line 
between Ruskin's earlier work, which is sufficiently de- 
scribed by the three titles, Modern Painters,. The Seven 
Lamps of Architecture, and The Stones of Venice, and his 
later work, chiefly on social subjects such as are discussed 
in Unto This Last, The Crowii of Wild Olive, and Fors 
Clavigera. And yet we cannot insist too often on the 
essential unity of this work, for, viewed in the large, it 
betrays one continuous development. The seeds of Fo7's 
are in The Stones of Venice. 

The governing idea of Ruskin's first published work, 
Modern Painters, Volume I, was a moral idea. The book 
was dedicated to the principle that that art is greatest 
which deals with the greatest number of greatest ideas, — 
those, we learn presently, which reveal divine truth ; the 
office of the painter, we are told, Ms the same as that of the 
preacher, for " the duty of both is to take for each dis- 
course one essential truth." As if recalling this argument 
that the painter is a preacher, Carlyle described The Stones 
of Venice as a '' sermon in stones." In the idea that all art, 
when we have taken due account of technique and train- 
ing, springs from a moral character, we find the unifying 
principle of Ruskin's strangely diversified work. The very 
title The Seven Lamps of Ai^chitecture, with its chapters 
headed '^ Sacrifice," ''Obedience," etc., is a sufficient illus- 
tration of Ruskin's identification of moral principles with 
sesthetic principles. A glance at the following pages of 
this book will show how Ruskin is for ever halting him- 
self to demand the moral significance of some fair land- 
scape, gorgeous painting, heaven-aspiring cathedral. In 

„ ^ , . " The Mountain Glory," for example, he refers to 

Underlying ,,/.' ,, . . , , 

Idea In all the mountains as ''kindly in simple lessons to 

his works, ^j^^ workman," and inquires later at what times 
mankind has offered worship in these mountain churches; 
of the English cathedral he says, " Weigh the influence of 
those dark towers on all who have passed through the 
lonely square at their feet for centuries " ; ^ of St. Mark's, 
1 Part 2, sec. 1, chap. 4. - See p. 159. 



INTRODUCTIOxN xiii 

*^And what effect has this splendour on those who pass 
beneath it ? ^' — and it will be noticed on referring to " The 
Two Boyhoods," that, in seeking to define the difference 
between Giorgione and Turner, the author instinctively has 
recourse to distinguishing the religious influences exerted 
on the two in youth. 

Now it is clear that a student of the relation of art to 
life, of work to the character of the workman and of his 
nation, may, and in fact inevitably must, be led in time to 
attend to the producer rather than to the product, to the 
cause rather than to the effect ; and if we grant, with Ruskin, 
that the sources of art, namely, the national life, are de- 
filed, it will obviously be the part, not only of humanity 
but of common sense, for such a student to set about puri- 
fying the social life of the nation. Whether the underly- 
reformation proposed by Ruskin be the proper ingideaa 
method of attack is not the question we are "^"^ °"®" 
here concerned with ; our only object at present being to 
call attention to the fact that such a lecture as that on 
"Traffic" in The Crown of Wild Olive is the logical out- 
growth of such a chapter as " Ideas of Beauty " in the 
first volume of Modern Painters. Between the author who 
wrote in 1842, of the necessity of revealing new truths 
in painting, " This, if it be an honest work of art, it must 
have done, for no man ever yet worked honestly without 
giving some such help to his race. God appoints to every 
one of his creatures a separate mission, and if they dis- 
charge it honourably . . . there will assuredly come of it 
such burning as, in its appointed mode and measure, shall 
shine before men, and be of service constant and holy," ^ 
and the author who wrote, " That country is the richest 
which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy 
human beings," ^ or, " The beginning of art is in getting 
our country clean, and our people beautiful," ^ — between 
these two, I say, there is no essential difference. They are 
not contradictory but consistent. 

Amidst the maze of subjects, then, which Ruskin, with 

1 Modern Painters, vol. 1, part 2, sec. 1, chap. 7. 

2 Unto This Last. 3 gee p. 262. 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

kaleidoscopic suddenness and variety, brings before the 
astonished gaze of his readers, let them confidently hold 
this guiding clue. They will find that Ruskin's "facts" 
are often not facts at all ; they "will discover that many of 
Art depend- I^uskin's choicest theories have been dismissed 
entupon to the limbo of exploded hypotheses; but they 
anJ'im- ^^^^ ^^^^ ^°^S before they find a more eloquent 
tional and convincing plea for the proposition that all 

greatness, g^gat art reposes upon a foundation of personal 
and national greatness. Critics of Ruskin will show you that 
he began Modern Painters while he was yet ignorant of the 
classic Italians ; that he wrote The Stones of Venice without 
realizing the full indebtedness of the Venetian to the Byzan- 
tine architecture ; that he proposed to unify the various 
religious sects although he had no knowledge of theology ; 
that he attempted a reconstruction of society though he had 
had no scientific training in political economy ; but in all 
this neglect of mere fact the sympathetic reader will dis- 
cover that contempt for the letter of the law which was char- 
acteristic of the nineteenth-century prophet, — of Carlyle, 
of Arnold, and of Emerson, — and which, if it be blindness, 
is that produced by an excess of light. 



HI 

ruskin's style 

Many people regard the style of Ruskin as his chief 
claim to greatness. If the time ever come when men no 
longer study him for sermons in stones, they will never- 
Sensuous- theless turn to his pages to enjoy one of the 
nessolWs most gorgeous prose styles of the nineteenth 
^*^^®" century. For a parallel to the sensuous beauties 

of Ruskin's essays on art, one turns instinctively to poetry ; 
and of all the poets Ruskin is perhaps likest Keats. His 
sentences, like the poet's, are thick-set with jeweled 
phrases ; they are full of subtle harmonies that respond, 
like a Stradivarius, to the player's every mood. In its 



INTRODUCTION xv 

ornateness Ruskin's style is like his favorite cathedral of 
Amiens, in the large stately, in detail exquisite, profuse, 
and not without a touch of the grotesque. It is the style 
of an artist. 

A critical fancy may even discover in the construction 
of his finest descriptions a method not unlike that of a 
painter at work upon his canvas. He blocks them out in 
large masses, then sketches and colors rapidly for general 
effects, treating detail at first more or less vaguely and col- 
lectively, but passing in the end to the elaboration of detail 
in the concrete, touching the whole with an imaginative 
gleam that lends a momentary semblance of life to the 
thing described, after the manner of the " pathetic fallacy." 
Thus it is in the famous description of St. Mark's : ^ we are 
given first the largest general impression, the Ruskln's 
''long, low pyramid of coloured light," which the method of 
artist proceeds to " hollow beneath into five great tion in de- 
vaulted porches," whence he leads the eye slowly scrlption. 
upwards amidst a mass of bewildering detail — "a confusion 
of delight" — from which there slowly emerge those con- 
crete details with which the author particularly wishes to 
impress us, "the breasts of the Greek horses blazing in their 
breadth of golden strength and St. Mark's lion lifted on 
a blue field covered with stars." In lesser compass we are 
shown the environs of Venice,^ the general impression of 
the '' long, low, sad-coloured line," being presently broken 
by the enumeration of unanalyzed detail, "tufted irregu- 
larly with brushwood and willows," and passing to concrete 
detail in the hills of Arqua, " a dark cluster of purple 
pyramids." In the still more miniature description of the 
original site of Venice ^ we have the same method : 

"The black desert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath 
the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and 
fearful silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the tide- 
less pools and the sea-bfrds flit from their margins with a ques- 
tioning cry." 

Equally characteristic of the painter is the ever-present 
1 See p. 162. =2 gee p. 139. 3 gee p. 147. 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

use of color. It is interesting merely to count the number 
His love ^^^ variety of colors used in the descriptions. It 
of color. will serve at least to call the reader's attention 
to the felicitous choice of words used in describing the 
opalescence of St. Mark's or the skillful combination of the 
colors characteristic of the great Venetians in such a sentence 
as, " the low bronzed gleaming of sea-rusted armor shot 
angrily under their blood-red mantle-folds " ^ — a glimpse 
of a Giorgione. 

He is even more atten^^ive to the ear than to the eye. 
He loves the sentence of stately rhythms and long-drawn 
harmonies, and he omits no poetic device that can heighten 
the charm of sound, — alliteration, as in the famous de- 
scription of the streets of Venice, 

" Far as the eye coukl reach, still the soft moving of stainless 
waters proudly pure ; as not the flower, so neither the thorn nor 
the thistle could grow in those glancing fields " ; ^ 

the balanced close for some long period, 

"to write her history on the white scrolls of the sea-surges 
and to word it in their thunder, and to gather and give forth, 
in the world-wide pulsation, the glory of the West and of 
the East, from the burning heart of her Fortitude and Splen- 
dour " ; 3 

and the tendency, almost a mannerism, to add to the music 
His love "^ ^^^ ^^^ rhythm, the deep organ-notes of Bib- 
oi prose lical text and paraphrase. But if we wish to see 
rhytlun. -^qw aptly Buskin's style responds to the tone of 
his subject, we need but remark the rich liquid sentence 
descriptive of Giorgione's home, 

"brightness out of the north and balm from the south, and the 
stars of evening and morning clear in the limitless light of arched 
heaven and circling sea," * 

which he has set over against the harsh explosiveness of 

" Near the south-west corner of Covent Garden, a square brick 
pit or wall is formed by a close-set block of house to the back 
windows of which it admits a few rays of light — " 

the birthplace of Turner. 

1 See p. 121. 2 See p. 122. ^ gge p. 149. * See p. 122. 



I 



INTRODUCTION x\ii 

But none knew better than Rusk in that a style so stiff 
with ornament was likely to produce all manner of faults. 
In overloading his sentences with jewelry he frequently 
obscures the sense ; his beauties often degenerate into mere 
prettiness ; his sweetness cloys. His free indulgence of the 
emotions, often at the expense of the intellect, His beauty 
leads to a riotous extravagance of superlative. °L^*^l^ _ 
But, above all, his richness distracts attention tracts from 
from matter to manner. In the case of an author the thought, 
so profoundly in earnest, this could not but be unfortunate ; 
nothing enraged him more than to have people look upon 
the beauties of his style rather than ponder the substance 
of his book. In a passage of complacent self-scourging he 
says: 

"For I have had what, in many respects, I boldly call the 
misfortune, to set my words sometimes prettily together ; not 
without a foolish vanity in the poor knack that I had of doing 
so, until I was heavily punished for this pride by finding that 
many people thought of the words only, and cared nothing 
for their meaning. Happily, therefore, the power of using such 
language — if indeed it ever were mine — is passing away from 
me; and whatever I am now able to say at all I find myself 
forced to say with great plainness." ^ 

But Ruskin's decision to speak with ^'' great plainness '' by 
no means made the people of England attend to what he 
said rather than the way he said it. He could be, and in 
his later work he usually was, strong and clear ; but the 
old picturesqueness and exuberance of passion were with 
him still. The public discovered that it enjoyed Ruskin's 
denunciations of machinery much as it had enjoyed his 
descriptions of mountains, and, without obviously mending 
its ways, called loudly for more. Lecture-rooms were 
crowded and editions exhausted by the ladies and gentle- 
men of England, whose nerves were pleasantly thrilled 
with a gentle surprise on being told that they 
had despised literature, art, science, nature, and esque ex- 
compassion, and that what they thought upon travagance 
any subject was ''a matter of no serious impor- 
tance"; that they could not be said to have any thoughts 

^ The Mystery of Life. 



XVlll 



INTRODUCTION 



at all — indeed, no right to think.^ The fiercer his anath- 
emas, the greater the applause ; the louder he shouted, 
the better he pleased. Let him split the ears of the ground- 
lings, let him out-Herod Herod, — the judicious might 
grieve, but all would be excitedly attentive. Their Jere- 
miah seemed at times like to become a jester, — there was 
a suggestion of the ludicrous in the sudden passage from 
birds to Greek coins, to mills, to Walter Scott, to million- 
aire malefactors, — a suggestion of acrobatic tumbling and 
somersault ; but he always got a hearing. In lecturing to the 
students of a military academy he had the pleasing audacity 
to begin : 

••Young soldiers, I do not doubt but that many of you came 
unwillingly to-night, and many of you in merely contemptuous 
curiosity, to hear what a writer on painting could possibly say, 
or would venture to say, respecting your great art of war ";2 

after which stinging challenge, one has no doubt, any 
feeling of offense was swallowed up in admiration of the 
speaker's physical courage. 

There can be little doubt that this later manner in which 
Ruskin allowed his Puritan instincts to defeat his sestheti- 
cism, and indulged to an alarming degree his gift of vitu- 
peration, was profoundly influenced by his " master," Car- 
lyle, who had long since passed into his later and raucous 
manner. Carlyle's delight in the disciple's diatribes probably 
encouraged the younger man in a vehemence of invective to 
which his love of dogmatic assertion already rendered him 
too prone. At his best, Ruskin, like Carlyle, 
ifcarlyle reminds us of a major prophet ; at his worst he 
upon shrieks and beats the air. His high indignations 

Ruskin. ^^^^ ^^.^ .^^^ ^^^ manner of absurdity and self- 
contradiction. An amusing instance of this may be given 
from Sesame and Lilies. In the first lecture, which, it will 
be recalled, was given in aid of a library fund, we find ^ the 
remark, ''We are filthy and foolish enough to thumb one 
another's books out of circulating libraries." His friends 

1 -Sesame and Lilies, " Kings' Treasuries," §§ 25, 31. 

2 The Crown of Wild Olive, " War." 

3 "Kings' Treasuries," § 32. 



INTRODUCTION xix 

and his enemies, the clergy (who " teach a false gospel for 
hire ") and the scientists, the merchants and the universities, 
Darwin and Dante, all had their share in the indignant 
lecturer's indiscriminate abuse. And yet in all the tropical 
luxuriance of his inconsistency, one can never doubt the 
man's sincerity. He never wrote for effect. He Tie unity 
may dazzle us, but his fire is never pyrotech- ofRuskln's 
nical ; it always springs from the deep volcanic ^ ^ ®' 
heart of him. His was a fervor too easily stirred and often 
ill-directed, but its wild brilliance cannot long be mistaken 
for the sky-rocket's ; it flares madly in all directions, now 
beautifying, now appalling, the night, the fine ardor of the 
painter passing into the fierce invective of the prophet. 
But in the end it is seen that Ruskin's style, like his sub- 
ject-matter, is a unity, — an emanation from a divine en- 
thusiasm making for *' whatsoever things are lovely, what- 
soever things are pure, whatsoever things are of good 
report." 



SELECTIONS FROM MODERN PAINTERS 

The five volumes of Modern Painters appeared at vari- 
ous intervals between 1843 and 1860, from the time Rus- 
kin was twenty-four until he was forty. The first volume was 
published in May, 1843; the second, in April, 1846; the 
third, January 15, 1856; the fourth, April 14, 1856; the 
last, in June, 1860. As his knowledge of his subject broad- 
ened and deepened, we find the later volumes difi'ering 
greatly in viewpoint and style from the earlier; but, as 
stated in the preface to the last volume, " in the main aim 
and principle of the book there is no variation, from its first 
syllable to its last.'' Ruskin himself maintained that the 
most important influence upon his thought in preparation 
for his work in Modern Painters was not from his " love 
of art, but of mountains and seas " ; and all the power of 
judgment he had obtained in art, he ascribed to his " steady 
habit of always looking for the subject principally, and for 
the art only as the means of expressing it." The first vol- 
ume was published as the work of '' a graduate of Oxford," 
Ruskin '' fearing that I might not obtain fair hearing if the 
reader knew my youth." The author's proud father did not 
allow the secret to be kept long. The title Ruskin origi- 
nally chose for the volume was Turner and the Ancients. 
To this Smith, Elder & Co., his publishers, objected, and 
the substitution of Modern Painters was their suggestion. 
The following is the title-page of the first volume in the 
original edition : 

MODERN PAINTERS : | Their Superiority \ In the 
Art of Landscape Painting \ To all | The Ancient 
Masters \ proved by examples of | The True, the 
Beautiful, and the Intellectual, | From the | Works 
of Modern Artists, especially | From those of J. M. 
W. Turner, Esq., R. A. | By a Graduate of Oxford | 
(Quotation from Wordsworth) | London : Smith, El- 
der & Co., 65 Cornhill. | 1843. 



2 MODERN PAINTERS 

THE EARTH-VEIL 
Volume V, Chapter 1 

"To dress it and to keep it." ^ 

That, then, was to be our work. Alas! what work 
have we set ourselves upon instead! How have we 
ravaged the garden instead of kept it — feeding our 
war-horses with its flowers, and splintering its trees 
into spear-shafts! 

"And at the East a flaming sword." ^ 

Is its flame quenchless ? and are those gates that keep 
the way indeed passable no more ? or is it not rather that 
we no more desire to enter ? For what can we conceive 
of that first Eden which we might not yet win back, if 
we chose ? It was a place full of flowers, we say. Well : 
the flowers are always striving to grow wherever we 
suffer them; and the fairer, the closer. There may, 
indeed, have been a Fall of Flowers, as a Fall of Man; 
but assuredly creatures such as we are can now fancy 
nothing lovelier than roses and lilies, which would grow 
for us side by side, leaf overlapping leaf, till the Earth 
was white and red with them, if we cared to have it so. 
And Paradise was full of pleasant shades and fruitful 
avenues. Well : what hinders us from covering as much 
of the world as we like with pleasant shade, and pure 
blossom, and goodly fruit? Who forbids its valleys to 
be covered over with corn till they laugh and sing? 
Who prevents its dark forests, ghostly and uninhabit- 
able, from being changed into infinite orchards, wreath- 
ing the hills with frail-floreted snow, far away to the 

* Genesis ii, 15; iii, 24. 



THE EARTH-VEIL 3 

half-lighted horizon of April, and flushing the face of all 
the autumnal earth with glow of clustered food ? But 
Paradise was a place of peace, we say, and all the ani- 
mals were gentle servants to us. Well : the world would 
yet be a place of peace if we were all peacemakers, and 
gentle service should we have of its creatures if we gave 
them gentle mastery. But so long as we make sport of 
slaying bird and beast, so long as we choose to contend 
rather with our fellows than with our faults, and make 
battlefield of our meadows instead of pasture — so long, 
truly, the Flaming Sword will still turn every way, and 
the gates of Eden remain barred close enough, till we 
have sheathed the sharper flame of our own passions, 
and broken down the closer gates of our own hearts. 
I have been led to see and feel this more and more, as 
I consider the service which the flowers and trees, which 
man was at first appointed to keep, were intended to 
render to him in return for his care ; and the services 
they still render to him, as far as he allows their influ- 
ence, or fulfils his own task towards them. For what 
infinite wonderfulness there is in this vegetation, con- 
sidered, as indeed it is, as the means by which the earth 
becomes the companion of man — his friend and his 
teacher ! In the conditions which we have traced in its 
rocks, there could only be seen preparation for his exist- 
ence ; — the characters which enable him to live on it 
safely, and to work with it easily — in all these it has 
been inanimate and passive ; but vegetation is to it as an 
imperfect soul, given to meet the soul of man. The 
earth in its depths must remain dead and cold, incapa- 
ble except of slow crystalline change ; but at its surface, 
which human beings look upon and deal with, it minis- 
ters to them through a veil of strange intermediate 
being: which breathes, but has no voice; moves, but 



4 MODERN PAINTERS 

cannot leave its appointed place; passes through life 
without consciousness, to death without bitterness; 
wears the beauty of youth, without its passion; and 
declines to the weakness of age, without its regret. 

And in this mystery of intermediate being, entirely 
subordinate to us, with which we can deal as we choose, 
having just the greater power as we have the less respon- 
sibility for our treatment of the unsuffering creature, 
most of the pleasures which we need from the external 
world are gathered, and most of the lessons we need are 
written, all kinds of precious grace and teaching being 
united in this link between the Earth and Man ; won- 
derful in universal adaptation to his need, desire, and 
discipline ; God's daily preparation of the earth for him, 
with beautiful means of life. First, a carpet to make it 
soft for him ; then, a coloured fantasy of embroidery 
thereon; then, tall spreading of foliage to shade him 
from sun heat, and shade also the fallen rain; that it 
may not dry quickly back into the clouds, but stay to 
nourish the springs among the moss. Stout wood to 
bear this leafage: easily to be cut, yet tough and light, 
to make houses for him, or instruments (lance-shaft, or 
plough-handle, according to his temper) ; useless, it had 
been, if harder; useless, if less fibrous; useless, if less 
elastic. Winter comes, and the shade of leafage falls 
away, to let the sun warm the earth ; the strong boughs 
remain, breaking the strength of winter winds. The 
seeds which are to prolong the race, innumerable 
according to the need, are made beautiful and palatable, 
varied into infinitude of appeal to the fancy of man, or 
provision for his service : cold juice, or glowing spice, or 
balm, or incense, softening oil, preserving resin, medi- 
cine of styptic, febrifuge, or lulling charm : and all these 
presented in forms of endless change. Fragility or 



THE EARTH-VEIL 5 

force, softness and strength, in all degrees and aspects ; 
unerring uprightness, as of temple pillars, or unguided 
wandering of feeble tendrils on the ground; mighty 
resistances of rigid arm and limb to the storms of ages, 
or wavings to and fro with faintest pulse of summer 
streamlet. Roots cleaving the strength of rock, or bind- 
ing the transience of the sand ; crests basking in sun- 
shine of the desert, or hiding by dripping spring and 
lightless cave; foliage far tossing in entangled fields 
beneath every wave of ocean — clothing, with varie- 
gated, everlasting films, the peaks of the trackless 
mountains, or ministering at cottage doors to every 
gentlest passion and simplest joy of humanity. 

Being thus prepared for us in all ways, and made 
beautiful, and good for food, and for building, and for 
instruments in our hands, this race of plants, deserving 
boundless affection and admiration from us, becomes, 
in proportion to their obtaining it, a nearly perfect test 
of our being in right temper of mind and way of life; 
so that no one can be far wrong in either who loves 
the trees enough, and every one is assuredly wrong 
in both who does not love them, if his life has brought 
them in his way. It is clearly possible to do without 
them, for the great companionship of the sea and sky 
are all that sailors need; and many a noble heart 
has been taught the best it had to learn between dark 
stone walls. Still if human life be cast among trees 
at all, the love borne to them is a sure test of its purity. 
And it is a sorrowful proof of the mistaken ways of 
the world that the "country," in the simple sense 
of a place of fields and trees, has hitherto been the 
source of reproach to its inhabitants, and that the 
words "countryman, rustic, clown, paysan, villager," 
still signify a rude and untaught person, as opposed 



6 MODERN PAINTERS 

to the words "townsman" and "citizen." We accept 
this usage of words, or the evil which it signifies, some- 
what too quietly; as if it were quite necessary and 
natural that country-people should be rude, and towns- 
people gentle. Whereas I believe that the result of 
each mode of life may, in some stages of the world's 
progress, be the exact reverse; and that another use 
of words may be forced upon us by a new aspect of 
facts, so that we may find ourselves saying: "Such 
and such a person is very gentle and kind — he is 
quite rustic ; and such and such another person is very 
rude and ill-taught — he is quite urbane." 

At all events, cities have hitherto gained the better 
part of their good report through our evil ways of going 
on in the world generally ; chiefly and eminently through 
our bad habit of fighting with each other. No field, in 
the Middle Ages, being safe from devastation, and every 
country lane yielding easier passage to the marauders, 
peacefully - minded men necessarily congregated in 
cities, and walled themselves in, making as few cross- 
country roads as possible : while the men who sowed 
and reaped the harvests of Europe were only the serv- 
ants or slaves of the barons. The disdain of all agri- 
cultural pursuits by the nobility, and of all plain facts 
by the monks, kept educated Europe in a state of mind 
over which natural phenomena could have no power; 
body and intellect being lost in the practice of war 
without purpose, and the meditation of words without 
meaning. Men learned the dexterity with sword and 
syllogism, which they mistook for education, within 
cloister and tilt-yard ; and looked on all the broad space 
of the world of God mainly as a place for exercise of 
horses, or for growth of food. 

There is a beautiful type of this neglect of the per- 



THE EARTH-VEIL 7 

fectness of the Earth's beauty, by reason of the passions 
of men, in that picture of Paul Uccello's of the battle 
of Sant' Egidio,^ in which the armies meet on a coun- 
try road beside a hedge of wild roses ; the tender red 
flowers tossing above the helmets, and glowing beneath 
the lowered lances. For in like manner the whole of 
Nature only shone hitherto for man between the tossing 
of helmet-crests; and sometimes I cannot but think of 
the trees of the earth as capable of a kind of sorrow, in 
that imperfect life of theirs, as they opened their in- 
nocent leaves in the warm springtime, in vain for men ; 
and all along the dells of England her beeches cast their 
dappled shade only where the outlaw drew his bow, and 
the king rode his careless chase ; and by the sweet French 
rivers their long ranks of poplar waved in the twilight, 
only to show the flames of burning cities on the hori- 
zon, through the tracery of their stems; amidst the fair 
defiles of the Apennines, the twisted olive-trunks hid 
the ambushes of treachery ; and on their valley mead- 
ows, day by day, the lilies which were white at the dawn 
were washed with crimson at sunset. 

And indeed I had once purposed, in this work, to 
show what kind of evidence existed respecting the pos- 
sible influence of country life on men ; it seeming to me, 
then, likely that here and there a reader would perceive 
this to be a grave question, more than most which we 
contend about, political or social, and might care to 
follow it out with me earnestly. 

The day will assuredly come when men will see that 
it is a grave question ; at which period, also, I doubt not, 

^ "In our own National Gallery. It is quaint and imperfect, but 
of great interest." [Ruskin.] Paolo Uccello [c. 1397-1475], a Flor- 
entine painter of the Renaissance, the first of the naturalists. His 
real name was Paolo di Dono, but he was called Uccello from his 
fondness for birds. 



8 MODERN PAINTERS 

there will arise persons able to investigate it. For the 
present, the movements of the world seem little likely to 
be influenced by botanical law; or by any other con- 
siderations respecting trees, than the probable price 
of timber. I shall limit myself, therefore, to my own 
simple woodman's work, and try to hew this book into 
its final shape, with the limited and humble aim that 
I had in beginning it, namely, to prove how far the 
idle and peaceable persons, who have hitherto cared 
about leaves and clouds, have rightly seen, or faithfully 
reported of them. 



THE MOUNTAIN GLORY 

Volume IV, Chapter 20 

I HAVE dwelt, in the foregoing chapter, on the sad- 
ness of the hills with the greater insistence that I feared 
my own excessive love for them might lead me into too 
favourable interpretation of their influences over the 
human heart ; or, at least, that the reader might accuse 
me of fond prejudice, in the conclusions to which, 
finally, I desire to lead him concerning them. For, to 
myself, mountains are the beginning and the end of all 
natural scenery; in them, and in the forms of inferior 
landscape that lead to them, my affections are wholly 
bound up ; and though I can look with happy admira- 
tion at the lowland flowers, and woods, and open skies, 
the happiness is tranquil and cold, like that of examin- 
ing detached flowers in a conservatory, or reading a 
pleasant book; and if the scenery be resolutely level, 
insisting upon the declaration of its own flatness in all 
the detail of it, as in Holland, or Lincolnshire, or Cen- 
tral Lpmbardy, it appears to me like a prison, and I 



THE MOUNTAIN GLORY 9 

cannot long endure it. But the slightest rise and fall in 
the road, — a mossy bank at the side of a crag of chalk, 
with brambles at its brow, overhanging it, — a ripple 
over three or four stones in the stream by the bridge, — 
above all, a wild bit of ferny ground under a fir or two, 
looking as if, possibly, one might see a hill if one got to 
the other side of the trees, will instantly give me intense 
delight, because the shadow, or the hope, of the hills is 
in them. 

And thus, although there are few districts of North- 
ern Europe, however apparently dull or tame, in which 
I cannot find pleasure, though the whole of Northern 
France (except Champagne), dull as it seems to most 
travellers, is to me a perpetual Paradise; and, putting 
Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, and one or two such other 
perfectly flat districts aside, there is not an English 
county which I should not find entertainment in explor- 
ing the cross-roads of, foot by foot; yet all my best 
enjoyment would be owing to the imagination of the 
hills, colouring, with their far-away memories, every 
lowland stone and herb. The pleasant French coteau, 
green in the sunshine, delights me, either by what real 
mountain character it has in itself (for in extent and suc- 
cession of promontory the flanks of the French valleys 
have quite the sublimity of true mountain distances), 
or by its broken ground and rugged steps among the 
vines, and rise of the leafage above, against the blue 
sky, as it might rise at Vevay or Como. There is not a 
wave of the Seine but is associated in my mind with the 
first rise of the sandstones and forest pines of Fontaine- 
bleau ; and with the hope of the Alps, as one leaves Paris 
with the horses' heads to the south-west, the morning 
sun flashing on the bright waves at Charenton. If there 
be no hope or association of this kind, and if I cannot 



10 MODERN PAINTERS 

deceive myself into fancying that perhaps at the next 
rise of the road there may be seen the film of a blue hill 
in the gleam of sky at the horizon, the landscape, how- 
ever beautiful, produces in me even a kind of sickness 
and pain ; and the whole view from Richmond Hill or 
Windsor Terrace, — nay, the gardens of Alcinous, with 
their perpetual summer, — or of the Hesperides (if they 
were flat, and not close to Atlas), golden apples and all, 
— I would give away in an instant, for one mossy 
granite stone a foot broad, and two leaves of lady- 
fern.^ 

I know that this is in great part idiosyncrasy; and 
that I must not trust to my own feelings, in this respect, 
as representative of the modern landscape instinct : yet 
I know it is not idiosyncrasy, in so far as there may be 
proved to be indeed an increase of the absolute beauty 
of all scenery in exact proportion to its mountainous 
character, providing that character be healthily moun- 
tainous. I do not mean to take the Col de Bonhomme 
as representative of hills, any more than I would take 
Romney Marsh as representative of plains ; but putting 
Leicestershire or Staffordshire fairly beside Westmore- 
land, and Lombardy or Champagne fairly beside the 

^ In tracing the whole of the deep enjoyment to mountain asso- 
ciation, I of course except whatever feelings are connected with the 
observance of rural life, or with that of architecture. None of these 
feelings arise out of the landscape properly so called : the pleasure 
with which we see a peasant's garden fairly kept, or a ploughman 
doing his work well, or a group of children playing at a cottage door, 
being wholly separate from that which we find in the fields or com- 
mons around them ; and the beauty of architecture, or the associa- 
tions connected with it, in like manner often ennobling the most 
tame scenery ; — yet not so but that we may always distinguish be- 
tween the abstract character of the unassisted landscape, and the 
charm which it derives from the architecture. Much of the majesty 
of French landscape consists in its grand and grey village churches 
and turreted farmhouses, not to speak of its cathedrals, castles, and 
beautifully placed cities. [Ruskin.] 



THE MOUNTAIN GLORY 11 

Pays de Vaud or the Canton Berne, I find the increase 
in the calculable sum of elements of beauty to be stead- 
ily in proportion to the increase of mountainous char- 
acter ; and that the best image which the world can give 
of Paradise is in the slope of the meadows, orchards, 
and corn-fields on the sides of a great Alp, with its pur- 
ple rocks and eternal snows above ; this excellence not 
being in any wise a matter referable to feeling, or indi- 
vidual preferences, but demonstrable by calm enumer- 
ation of the number of lovely colours on the rocks, the 
varied grouping of the trees, and quantity of noble in- 
cidents in stream, crag, or cloud, presented to the eye 
at any given moment. 

For consider, first, the difference produced in the 
whole tone of landscape colour by the introductions 
of purple, violet, and deep ultramarine blue, which we 
owe to mountains. In an ordinary lowland landscape 
we have the blue of the sky ; the green of grass, which I 
will suppose (and this is an unnecessary concession to 
the lowlands) entirely fresh and bright; the green of 
trees ; and certain elements of purple, far more rich and 
beautiful than we generally should think, in their bark 
and shadows (bare hedges and thickets, or tops of trees, 
in subdued afternoon sunshine, are nearly perfect pur- 
ple, and of an exquisite tone), as well as in ploughed 
fields, and dark ground in general. But among moun- 
tains, in addition to all this, large unbroken spaces of 
pure violet and purple are introduced in their distances: 
and even near, by films of cloud passing over the dark- 
ness of ravines or forests, blues are produced of the most 
subtle tenderness; these azures and purples^ passing 

1 One of the principal reasons for the false supposition that 
Switzerland is not picturesque, is the error of most sketchers and 
painters ia representing pine forest in middle distance as dark green. 



n MODERN PAINTERS 

into rose-colour of otherwise wholly unattainable deli- 
cacy among the upper summits, the blue of the sky 
being at the same time purer and deeper than in the 
plains. Nay, in some sense, a person who has never 
seen the rose-colour of the rays of dawn crossing a blue 
mountain twelve or fifteen miles away, can hardly be 
said to know what tenderness in colour means at all; 
bright tenderness he may, indeed, see in the sky or in a 
flower, but this grave tenderness of the far-away hill- 
purples he cannot conceive. 

Together with this great source of pre-eminence in 
mass of colour, we have to estimate the influence of the 
finished inlaying and enamel-work of the colour-jewel- 
lery on every stone ; and that of the continual variety in 
species of flower ; most of the mountain flowers being, 
besides, separately lovelier than the lowland ones. The 
wood hyacinth and wild rose are, indeed, the only 
supreme flowers that the lowlands can generally show ; 
and the wild rose is also a mountaineer, and more fra- 
grant in the hills, while the wood hyacinth, or grape 
hyacinth, at its best cannot match even the dark bell- 
gentian, leaving the light-blue star-gentian in its uncon- 
tested queenliness, and the Alpine rose and Highland 
heather wholly without similitude. The violet, lily of 
the valley, crocus, and wood anemone are, I suppose, 
claimable partly by the plains as well as the hills ; but 
the large orange lily and narcissus I have never seen but 

or grey green, whereas its true colour is always purple, at distances 
of even two or three miles. Let any traveller coming down the Mon- 
tanvert look for an aperture, three or four inches wide, between the 
near pine branches, through which, standing eight or ten feet from it, 
he can see the opposite forests on the Breven or Flegere. Those 
forests are not above two or two and a half miles from him; but he 
will find the aperture is filled by a tint of nearly pure azure or purple, 
not by green. [Ruskin.] 



THE MOUNTAIN GLORY 13 

on hill pastures, and the exquisite oxalis is pre-eminently 
a mountaineer.^ 

To this supremacy in mosses and flowers we have 
next to add an inestimable gain in the continual pre- 
sence and power of water. Neither in its clearness, its 
colour, its fantasy of motion, its calmness of space, 
depth, and reflection, or its wrath, can water be con- 
ceived by a lowlander, out of sight of sea. A sea wave 
is far grander than any torrent — but of the sea and its 
influences we are not now speaking ; and the sea itself, 
though it can be clear, is never calm, among our shores, 
in the sense that a mountain lake can be calm. The sea 
seems only to pause ; the mountain lake to sleep, and to 
dream. Out of sight of the ocean a lowlander cannot be 
considered ever to have seen water at all. The mantling 
of the pools in the rock shadows, with the golden flakes 
of light sinking down through them like falling leaves, 
the ringing of the thin currents among the shallows, the 
flash and the cloud of the cascade, the earthquake and 
foam-fire of the cataract, the long lines of alternate 
mirror and mist that lull the imagery of the hills 
reversed in the blue of morning, — all these things 
belong to those hills as their undivided inheritance. 

To this supremacy in wave and stream is joined a no 
less manifest pre-eminence in the character of trees. It 
is possible among plains, in the species of trees which 
properly belong to them, the poplars of Amiens, for 
instance, to obtain a serene simplicity of grace, which, 
as I said, is a better help to the study of gracefulness, as 
such, than any of the wilder groupings of the hills; so, 
also, there are certain conditions of symmetrical luxuri- 

^ The Savoyard's name for its flower, "Pain du Bon Dieu," is 
very beautiful ; from, I believe, the supposed resemblance of its white 
and scattered blossom to the fallen manna. [Ruskin.] 



14 MODERN PAINTERS 

ance developed in the park and avenue, rarely rivalled 
in their way among mountains ; and yet the mountain 
superiority in foliage is, on the whole, nearly as com- 
plete as it is in water: for exactly as there are some 
expressions in the broad reaches of a navigable low- 
land river, such as the Loire or Thames, not, in their 
way, to be matched among the rock rivers, and yet for 
all that a lowlander cannot be said to have truly seen 
the element of water at all ; so even in the richest parks 
and avenues he cannot be said to have truly seen trees. 
For the resources of trees are not developed until they 
have difficulty to contend with ; neither their tenderness 
of brotherly love and harmony, till they are forced to 
choose their ways of various life where there is con- 
tracted room for them, talking to each other with their 
restrained branches. The various action of trees rooting 
themselves in inhospitable rocks, stooping to look into 
ravines, hiding from the search of glacier winds, reach- 
ing forth to the rays of rare sunshine, crowding down 
together to drink at sweetest streams, climbing hand in 
hand among the difficult slopes, opening in sudden 
dances round the mossy knolls, gathering into com- 
panies at rest among the fragrant fields, gliding in 
grave procession over the heavenward ridges — nothing 
of this can be conceived among the unvexed and 
unvaried felicities of the lowland forest: while to all 
these direct sources of greater beauty are added, first 
the power of redundance, — the mere quantity of foli- 
age visible in the folds and on the promontories of a 
single Alp being greater than that of an entire lowland 
landscape (unless a view from some cathedral tower) ; 
and to this charm of redundance, that of clearer visibil- 
ity, — tree after tree being constantly shown in succes- 
sive height, one behind another, instead of the mere tops 



THE MOUNTAIN GLORY 15 

and flanks of masses, as in the plains ; and the forms of 
multitudes of them continually defined against the clear 
sky, near and above, or against white clouds entangled 
among their branches, instead of being confused in 
dimness of distance. 

Finally, to this supremacy in foliage we have to add 
the still less questionable supremacy in clouds. There 
is no effect of sky possible in the lowlands which may 
not in equal perfection be seen among the hills; but 
there are effects by tens of thousands, for ever invisible 
and inconceivable to the inhabitant of the plains, mani- 
fested among the hills in the course of one day. The 
mere power of familiarity with the clouds, of walking 
with them and above them, alters and renders clear our 
whole conception of the baseless architecture of the sky; 
and for the beauty of it, there is more in a single wreath 
of early cloud, pacing its way up an avenue of pines, or 
pausing among the points of their fringes, than in all the 
white heaps that fill the arched sky of the plains from 
one horizon to the other. And of the nobler cloud mani- 
festations, — the breaking of their troublous seas 
against the crags, their black spray sparkling with 
lightning; or the going forth of the morning ^ along 
their pavements of moving marble, level-laid between 
dome and dome of snow; — of these things there can 
be as httle imagination or understanding in an inhab- 
itant of the plains as of the scenery of another planet 
than his own. 

And, observe, all these superiorities are matters 
plainly measurable and calculable, not in any wise to 
be referred to estimate of sensation. Of the grandeur 
or expression of the hills I have not spoken ; how far 
they are great, or strong, or terrible, I do not for the 
^ Ezekiel vii, 10; Hosea vi, 3. 



16 MODERN PAINTERS 

moment consider, because vastness, and strength, and 
terror, are not to all minds subjects of desired contem- 
plation. It may make no difference to some men 
whether a natural object be large or small, whether it 
be strong or feeble. But lovehness of colour, perfect- 
ness of form, endlessness of change, wonderfulness of 
structure, are precious to all undiseased human minds ; 
and the superiority of the mountains in all these things 
to the lowland is, I repeat, as measurable as the rich- 
ness of a painted window matched with a white one, or 
the wealth of a museum compared with that of a simply 
furnished chamber. They seem to have been built for 
the human race, as at once their schools and cathe- 
drals ; full of treasures of illuminated manuscript for the 
scholar, kindly in simple lessons to the worker, quiet 
in pale cloisters for the thinker, glorious in holiness for 
the worshipper. And of these great cathedrals of the 
earth, with their gates of rock, pavements of cloud, 
choirs of stream and stone, altars of snow, and vaults of 
purple traversed by the continual stars, — of these, as 
we have seen, Mt was written, nor long ago, by one of the 
best of the poor human race for whom they were built, 
wondering in himself for whom their Creator cow/c? have 
made them, and thinking to have entirely discerned the 
Divine intent in them — "They are inhabited by the 
Beasts." ^ 

Was it then indeed thus with us, and so lately ^ Had 
mankind offered no worship in their mountain churches ? 
Was all that granite sculpture and floral painting done 
by the angels in vain ? 

Not so. It will need no prolonged thought to con- 

' In " The Mountain Gloom," the chapter immediately preceding. 
2 Ruskin refers to The Fulfilling of the Scripture, a book by 
Robert Fleming [1630-94]. 



SUNRISE ON THE ALPS 17 

vince us that in the hills the purposes of their Maker 
have indeed been accomplished in such measure as, 
through the sin or folly of men, He ever permits them 
to be accomplished. It may not seem, from the general 
language held concerning them, or from any directly 
traceable results, that mountains have had serious in- 
fluence on human intellect; but it will not, I think, be 
difficult to show that their occult influence has been 
both constant and essential to the progress of the race. 



SUNRISE ON THE ALPS^ 
Volume I, Section 3, Part 2, Chapter 4 

Stand upon the peak of some isolated mountain at 
daybreak, when the night mists first rise from off the 
plains, and watch their white and lake-like fields, as 
they float in level bays and winding gulfs about the 
islanded summits of the lower hills, untouched yet by 
more than dawn, colder and more quiet than a windless 
sea under the moon of midnight ; watch when the first 
sunbeam is sent upon the silver channels, how the 
foam of their undulating surface parts and passes away, 
and down under their depths the glittering city and 
green pasture lie like Atlantis,^ between the white paths 
of winding rivers; the flakes of light falling every mo- 
ment faster and broader among the starry spires, as the 
wreathed surges break and vanish above them, and the 
confused crests and ridges of the dark hills shorten their 
grey shadows upon the plain. . . . Wait a Httle longer, 
and you shall see those scattered mists rallying in the 



' Some sentences of an argumentative nature have been omitted 
from this selection. 

^ A mythical island in the Atlantic. 



18 MODERN PAINTERS 

ravines, and floating up towards you, along the winding 
valleys, till they crouch in quiet masses, iridescent with 
the morning light,^ upon the broad breasts of the higher 
hills, whose leagues of massy undulation will melt back 
and back into that robe of material light, until they fade 
away, lost in its lustre, to appear again above, in the 
serene heaven, like a wild, bright, impossible dream, 
foundationless and inaccessible, their very bases van- 
ishing in the unsubstantial and mocking blue of the 
deep lake below.^ . . . Wait yet a little longer, and you 
shall see those mists gather themselves into white tow- 
ers, and stand like fortresses along the promontories, 
massy and motionless, only piled with every instant 
higher and higher into the sky, and casting longer shad- 
ows athwart the rocks ; and out of the pale blue of the 
horizon you will see forming and advancing a troop of 
narrow, dark, pointed vapours, which will cover the 
sky, inch by inch, with their grey network, and take the 
light off the landscape with an eclipse which will stop 
the singing of the birds and the motion of the leaves, 
together ; and then you will see horizontal bars of black 
shadow forming under them, and lurid wreaths create 
themselves, you know not how, along the shoulders of 
the hills; you never see them form, but when you look 
back to a place which was clear an instant ago, there is a 
cloud on it, hanging by the precipices, as a hawk pauses 
over his prey. . . . And then you will hear the sud- 
den rush of the awakened wind, and you will see those 

- I have often seen the white, thin, morning cloud, edged \nth 
the seven colours of the prism. I am not aware of the cause of this 
phenomenon, for it takes place not when we stand vdth our backs to 
the sun, but in clouds near the sun itself, irregularly and over indefi- 
nite spaces, sometimes taking place in the body of the cloud. The 
colours are distinct and vivid, but have a kind of metallic lustre 
upon them. [Ruskin.] 

^ Lake Lucerne. [Ruskin.] 



SUNRISE ON THE ALPS 19 

watch-towers of vapour swept away from their founda- 
tions, and waving curtains of opaque rain let down to 
the valleys, swinging from the burdened clouds in black 
bending fringes, or pacing in pale columns along the 
lake level, grazing its surface into foam as they go. 
And then, as the sun sinks, you shall see the storm drift 
for an instant from off the hills, leaving their broad 
sides smoking, and loaded yet with snow-white, torn, 
steam-like rags of capricious vapour, now gone, now 
gathered again ; while the smouldering sun, seeming not 
far away, but burning like a red-hot ball beside you, 
and as if you could reach it, plunges through the rush- 
ing wind and rolHng cloud with headlong fall, as if it 
meant to rise no more, dyeing all the air about it with 
blood. . . . And then you shall hear the fainting tem- 
pest die in the hollow of the night, and you shall see a 
green halo kindling on the summit of the eastern hillss 
brighter — brighter yet, till the large white circle of the 
slow moon is lifted up among the barred clouds, step by 
step, line by line; star after star she quenches with her 
kindling light, setting in their stead an army of pale, 
penetrable, fleecy wreaths in the heaven, to give light 
upon the earth, which move together, hand in hand, 
company by company, troop by troop, so measured in 
their unity of motion, that the whole heaven seems to 
roll with them, and the earth to reel under them. . . . 
And then wait yet for one hour, until the east again 
becomes purple, and the heaving mountains, rolling 
against it in darkness, like waves of a wild sea, are 
drowned one by one in the glory of its burning : watch 
the white glaciers blaze in their winding paths about 
the mountains, like mighty serpents with scales of fire : 
watch the columnar peaks of solitary snow, kindling 
downwards, chasm by chasm, each in itself a new 



20 MODERN PAINTERS 

morning; their long avalanches cast down in keen 
streams brighter than the lightning, sending each his 
tribute of driven snow, like altar-smoke, up to the 
heaven; the rose-light of their silent domes flushing 
that heaven about them and above them, piercing with 
purer light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, 
casting a new glory on every wreath as it passes by, 
until the whole heaven, one scarlet canopy, is inter- 
woven with a roof of waving flame, and tossing, vault 
beyond vault, as with the drifted wings of many com- 
panies of angels : and then, when you can look no 
more for gladness, and when you are bowed down with 
fear and love of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me 
who has best delivered this His message unto men ! ^ 



THE GRAND STYLE ^ 

Volume III, Chaptek 1 

In taking up the clue of an inquiry, now intermitted 
for nearly ten years, it may be well to do as a traveller 
would, who had to recommence an interrupted journey 
in a guideless country ; and, ascending, as it were, some 
little hill beside our road, note how far we have already 
advanced, and what pleasantest ways we may choose 
for farther progress. 

1 endeavoured, in the beginning of the first volume, 
to divide the sources of pleasure open to us in Art into 
certain groups, which might conveniently be studied in 
succession. After some preliminary discussion, it was 
concluded that these groups were, in the main, three; 

' The implication is that Turner has best delivered it. 

2 The full title of this chapter is "Of the Received Opinions 
touching the ' Grand Style.' " 



THE GRAND STYLE 21 

consisting, first, of the pleasures taken in perceiving 
simple resemblance to Nature (Ideas of Truth); sec- 
ondly, of the pleasures taken in the beauty of the things 
chosen to be painted (Ideas of Beauty); and, lastly, of 
pleasures taken in the meanings and relations of these 
things (Ideas of Relation). 

The first volume, treating of the ideas of Truth, was 
chiefly occupied with an inquiry into the various suc- 
cess with which different artists had represented the 
facts of Nature, — an inquiry necessarily conducted 
very imperfectly, owing to the want of pictorial illustra- 
tion. 

The second volume merely opened the inquiry into 
the nature of ideas of Beauty and Relation, by analys- 
ing (as far as I was able to do so) the two faculties of 
the human mind which mainly seized such ideas; 
namely, the contemplative and imaginative faculties. 

It remains for us to examine the various success of 
artists, especially of the great landscape-painter whose 
works have been throughout our principal subject, in 
addressing these faculties of the human mind, and to 
consider who among them has conveyed the noblest 
ideas of beauty, and touched the deepest sources of 
thought. 

I do not intend, however, now to pursue the inquiry 
in a method so laboriously systematic ; for the subject 
may, it seems to me, be more usefully treated by pursu- 
ing the different questions which rise out of it just as they 
occur to us, without too great scrupulousness in mark- 
ing connections, or insisting on sequences. Much time 
is wasted by human beings, in general, on establish- 
ment of systems; and it often takes more labour to 
master the intricacies of an artificial connection, than to 
remember the separate facts which are so carefully con- 



22 MODERN PAINTERS 

nected. I suspect that system-makers, in general, are 
not of much more use, each in his own domain, than, 
in that of Pomona, the old women who tie cherries upon 
sticks, for the more convenient portableness of the 
same. To cultivate well, and choose well, your cherries, 
is of some importance ; but if they can be had in their 
own wild way of clustering about their crabbed stalk, 
it is a better connection for them than any other ; and, if 
they cannot, then, so that they be not bruised, it makes 
to a boy of a practical disposition not much difference 
whether he gets them by handfuls, or in beaded sym- 
metry on the exalting stick. I purpose, therefore, hence- 
forward to trouble myself little with sticks or twine, but 
to arrange my chapters with a view to convenient refer- 
ence, rather than to any careful division of subjects, 
and to follow out, in any by-ways that may open, on 
right hand or left, whatever question it seems useful at 
any moment to settle. 

And, in the outset, I find myself met by one which I 
ought to have touched upon before — one of especial 
interest in the present state of the Arts. I have said that 
the art is greatest which includes the greatest ideas ; but 
I have not endeavoured to define the nature of this 
greatness in the ideas themselves. We speak of great 
truths, of great beauties, great thoughts. What is it 
which makes one truth greater than another, one 
thought greater than another? This question is, I 
repeat, of peculiar importance at the present time; for, 
during a period now of some hundred and fifty years, 
all writers on Art who have pretended to eminence, 
have insisted much on a supposed distinction between 
what they call the Great and the Low Schools ; using 
the terms " High Art," " Great or Ideal Style," and other 
such, as descriptive of a certain noble manner of paint- 



THE GRAND STYLE 23 

ing, which it was desirable that all students of Art 
should be early led to reverence and adopt ; and char- 
acterizing as "vulgar," or "low," or "realist," another 
manner of painting and conceiving, which it was equally 
necessary that all students should be taught to avoid. 

But lately this established teaching, never very intel- 
ligible, has been gravely called in question. The advo- 
cates and self -supposed practisers of "High Art" are 
beginning to be looked upon with doubt, and their 
peculiar phraseology to be treated with even a certain 
degree of ridicule. And other forms of Art are partly 
developed among us, which do not pretend to be high, 
but rather to be strong, healthy, and humble. This 
matter of "highness" in Art, therefore, deserves our 
most careful consideration. Has it been, or is it, a true 
highness, a true princeliness, or only a show of it, con- 
sisting in courtly manners and robes of state .^ Is it 
rocky height or cloudy height, adamant or vapour, on 
which the sun of praise so long has risen and set ? It 
will be well at once to consider this. 

And first, let us get, as quickly as may be, at the 
exact meaning with which the advocates of "High 
Art" use that somewhat obscure and figurative term. 

I do not know that the principles in question are any- 
where more distinctly expressed than in two papers in 
the Idler y written by Sir Joshua Reynolds, of course 
under the immediate sanction of Johnson ; and which 
may thus be considered as the utterance of the views 
then held upon the subject by the artists of chief skill, 
and critics of most sense, arranged in a form so brief 
and clear as to admit of their being brought before the 
public for a morning's entertainment. I cannot, there- 
fore, it seems to me, do better than quote these two let- 
ters, or at least the important parts of them, examining 



24 MODERN PAINTERS 

the exact meaning of each passage as it occurs. There 
are, in all, in the Idler three letters on painting, Nos. 76, 
79, and 82; of these, the first is directed only against 
the impertinences of pretended connoisseurs, and is as 
notable for its faithfulness as for its wit in the descrip- 
tion of the several modes of criticism in an artificial and 
ignorant state of society : it is only, therefore, in the two 
last papers that we find the expression of the doctrines 
which it is our business to examine. 

No. 79 (Saturday, October 20, 1759) begins, after a 
short preamble, with the following passage : — 

"Amongst the Painters, and the writers on Painting, 
there is one maxim universally admitted and continu- 
ally inculcated. Imitate nature is the invariable rule; 
but I know none who have explained in what manner 
this rule is to be understood ; the consequence of which 
is, that everyone takes it in the most obvious sense — 
that objects are represented naturally, when they have 
such relief that they seem real. It may appear strange, 
perhaps, to hear this sense of the rule disputed; but it 
must be considered, that, if the excellency of a Painter 
consisted only in this kind of imitation, Painting must 
lose its rank, and be no longer considered as a liberal 
art, and sister to Poetry: this imitation being merely 
mechanical, in which the slowest intellect is always sure 
to succeed best ; for the Painter of genius cannot stoop 
to drudgery, in which the understanding has no part ; 
and what pretence has the Art to claim kindred with 
Poetry but by its power over the imagination ? To this 
power the Painter of genius directs him; in this sense 
he studies Nature, and often arrives at his end, even by 
being unnatural in the confined sense of the word. 

"The grand style of Painting requires this minute 
attention to be carefully avoided, and must be kept as 



THE GRAND STYLE 25 

separate from it as the style of Poetry from that of His- 
tory. (Poetical ornaments destroy that air of truth and 
plainness which ought to characterize History; but the 
very being of Poetry consists in departing from this 
plain narrative, and adopting every ornament that will 
warm the imagination.)^ To desire to see the excel- 
lences of each style united — to mingle the Dutch with 
the Italian school, is to join contrarieties which cannot 
subsist together, and which destroy the efficacy of each 
other." 

We find, first, from this interesting passage, that the 
writer considers the Dutch and Italian masters as 
severally representative of the low and high schools; 
next, that he considers the Dutch painters as excelHng 
in a mechanical imitation, "in which the slowest intel- 
lect is always sure to succeed best"; and, thirdly, that 
he considers the Italian painters as excelling in a style 
which corresponds to that of imaginative poetry in liter- 
ature, and which has an exclusive right to be called the 
grand style. 

I wish that it were in my power entirely tc concur 
with the writer, and to enforce this opinion thus dis- 
tinctly stated. I have never been a zealous partisan 
of the Dutch School, and should rejoice in claiming 
Reynolds's authority for the assertion, that their man- 
ner was one "in which the slowest intellect is always 
sure to succeed best." But before his authority can be 
so claimed, we must observe exactly the meaning of the 
assertion itself, and separate it from the company of 
some others not perhaps so admissible. First, I say, we 

^ I have put this sentence in a parenthesis, because it is incon- 
sistent with the rest of the statement, and with the general teaching 
of the paper; since that which "attends only to the invariable" can- 
not certainly adopt "every ornament that will warm the imagina- 
tion." [Ruskin.] 



26 MODERN PAINTERS 

must observe Reynolds's exact meaning, for (though 
the assertion may at first appear singular) a man who 
uses accurate language is always more liable to misin- 
terpretation than one who is careless in his expressions. 
We may assume that the latter means very nearly what 
we at first suppose him to mean, for words which have 
been uttered without thought may be received without 
examination. But when a writer or speaker may be 
fairly supposed to have considered his expressions care- 
fully, and, after having revolved a number of terms in 
his mind, to have chosen the one which exactly means 
the thing he intends to say, we may be assured that 
what costs him time to select, will require from us time 
to understand, and that we shall do him wrong, unless 
we pause to reflect how the word which he has actually 
employed differs from other words which it seems he 
might have employed. It thus constantly happens that 
persons themselves unaccustomed to think clearly, or 
speak correctly, misunderstand a logical and careful 
writer, and are actually in more danger of being misled 
by language which is measured and precise, than by 
that which is loose and inaccurate. 

Now, in the instance before us, a person not accus- 
tomed to good writing might very rashly conclude that 
when Reynolds spoke of the Dutch School as one " in 
which the slowest intellect was sure to succeed best," he 
meant to say that every successful Dutch painter was 
a fool. We have no right to take his assertion in that 
sense. He says, the slowest intellect. We have no right 
to assume that he meant the weakest. For it is true, 
that in order to succeed in the Dutch style, a man has 
need of qualities of mind eminently deliberate and sus- 
tained. He must be possessed of patience rather than 
of power; and must feel no weariness in contemplating 



THE GRAND STYLE 27 

the expression of a single thought for several months 
together. As opposed to the changeful energies of the 
imagination, these mental characters may be properly 
spoken of as under the general term — slowness of 
intellect. But it by no means follows that they are 
necessarily those "of weak or foolish men. 

We observe, however, farther, that the imitation 
which Reynolds supposes to be characteristic of the 
Dutch School is that which gives to objects such relief 
that they seem real, and that he then speaks of this art 
of realistic imitation as corresponding to history in 
literature. 

Reynolds, therefore, seems to class these dull works 
of the Dutch School under a general head, to which 
they are not commonly referred — that of historical 
painting; while he speaks of the works of the Italian 
School not as historical, but as 'poetical painting. His 
next sentence will farther manifest his meaning. 

" The Italian attends only to the invariable, the great 
and general ideas which are fixed and inherent in uni- 
versal Nature; the Dutch, on the contrary, to literal 
truth and a minute exactness in the detail, as I may say, 
of Nature modified by accident. The attention to these 
petty peculiarities is the very cause of this naturalness 
so much admired in the Dutch pictures, which, if we 
suppose it to be a beauty, is certainly of a lower order, 
which ought to give place to a beauty of a superior kind, 
since one cannot be obtained but by departing from the 
other. 

"If my opinion was asked concerning the works 
of Michael Angelo, whether they would receive any 
advantage from possessing this mechanical merit, I 
should not scruple to say, they would not only receive 
no advantage, but would lose, in a great measure, the 



28 MODERN PAINTERS 

effect which they now have on every mind susceptible 
of great and noble ideas. His works may be said to be all 
genius and soul ; and why should they be loaded with 
heavy matter, which can only counteract his purpose 
by retarding the progress of the imagination ? " 

Examining carefully this and the preceding passage, 
we find the author's unmistakable meaning to be, that 
Dutch painting is history ; attending to literal truth and 
"minute exactness in the details of nature modified by 
accident." That Italian painting is poetry, attending 
only to the invariable; and that works which attend 
only to the invariable are full of genius and soul ; but 
that literal truth and exact detail are "heavy matter 
which retards the progress of the imagination." 

This being then indisputably what Reynolds means 
to tell us, let us think a little whether he is in all respects 
right. And first, as he compares his two kinds of paint- 
ing to history and poetry, let us see how poetry and 
history themselves differ, in their use of variable and 
invariable details. I am writing at a window which 
commands a view of the head of the Lake of Geneva ; 
and as I look up from my paper, to consider this point, 
I see, beyond it, a blue breadth of softly moving water, 
and the outHne of the mountains above Chillon, bathed 
in morning mist. The first verses which naturally come 
into my mind are — 

A thousand feet in depth below 
The massy waters meet and flow; 
So far the fathom line was sent 
From Chillon's snow-white battlement.* 

Let us see in what manner this poetical statement is 
distinguished from a historical one. 

^ Stanza 6 of Byron's Prisoner of Chillon, quoted with a slight 
inaccuracy. 



THE GRAND STYLE 29 

It is distinguished from a truly historical statement, 
first, in being simply false. The water under the Castle 
of Chillon is not a thousand feet deep, nor anything like 
it.^ Herein, certainly, these lines fulfil Reynolds's first 
requirement in poetry, "that it should be inattentive 
to literal truth and minute exactness in detail." In 
order, however, to make our comparison more closely 
in other points, let us assume that what is stated is 
indeed a fact, and that it was to be recorded, first his- 
torically, and then poetically. 

Historically stating it, then, we should say: "The 
lake was sounded from the walls of the Castle of Chil- 
lon, and found to be a thousand feet deep." 

Now, if Reynolds be right in his idea of the difference 
between history and poetry, we shall find that Byron 
leaves out of this statement certain i/?inecessary details, 
and retains only the invariable, — that is to say, the 
points which the Lake of Geneva and Castle of Chillon 
have in common with all other lakes and castles. 

Let us hear, therefore. 

A thousand feet in depth below. 

" Below " ? Here is, at all events, a word added 
(instead of anything being taken away); invariable, 
certainly in the case of lakes, but not absolutely neces- 
sary. 

The massy waters meet and flow. 

" Massy " ! why massy .'' Because deep water is 
heavy. The word is a good word, but it is assuredly an 
added detail, and expresses a character, not which the 

^ "Messrs. Mallet and Pictet. beintr on the lake, in front of the 
Castle of Chillon. on August 6. 1774, sunk a thermometer to the 
depth of 312 feet." . . . — Saussure. Voyages dans les Alpes, 
chap, ii, § 33. It appears from the next paragraph, that the ther- 
mometer was at the bottom of the lake. [Ruskin, altered.] 



30 MODERN PAINTERS 

Lake of Geneva has in common with all other lakes, 
but which it has in distinction from those which are 
narrow, or shallow. 

" Meet and flow.*' Why meet and flow ? Partly to 
make up a rhyme ; partly to tell us that the waters are 
forceful as well as massy, and changeful as well as 
deep. Observe, a farther addition of details, and of 
details more or less peculiar to the spot, orj according 
to Reynolds's definition, of "heavy matter, retarding 
the progress of the imagination." 

So far the fathom line was sent. 

Why fathom line? All lines for sounding are not 
fathom lines. If the lake was ever sounded from Chil- 
lon, it was probably sounded in metres, not fathoms. 
This is an addition of another particular detail, in 
which the only compliance with Reynolds's require- 
ment is, that there is some chance of its being an inac- 
curate one. 

From Chillon's snow-white battlement. 

Why snow-white.'^ Because castle battlements are 
not usually snow-white. This is another added detail, 
and a detail quite peculiar to Chillon, and therefore 
exactly the most striking word in the whole passage. 

" Battlement " ! Why battlement ? Because all walls 
have not battlements, and the addition of the term 
marks the castle to be not merely a prison, but a 
fortress. 

This is a curious result. Instead of finding, as we 
expected, the poetry distinguished from the history by 
the omission of details, we find it consist entirely in the 
addition of details ; and instead of being characterized 
by regard only of the invariable, we find its whole power 



THE GRAND STYLE 31 

to consist in the clear expression of what is singular and 
particular ! 

The reader may pursue the investigation for himself 
in other instances. He will find in every case that a 
poetical is distinguished from a merely historical state- 
ment, not by being more vague, but more specific ; and 
it might, therefore, at first appear that our author's 
comparison should be simply reversed, and that the 
Dutch School should be called poetical, and the Italian 
historical. But the term poetical does not appear very 
applicable to the generality of Dutch painting; and a 
little reflection will show us, that if the Italians repre- 
sent only the invariable, they cannot be properly com- 
pared even to historians. For that which is incapable of 
change has no history, and records which state only the 
invariable need not be written, and could not be read. 

It is evident, therefore, that our author has entangled 
himself in some grave fallacy, by introducing this idea 
of invariableness as forming a distinction between 
poetical and historical art. What the fallacy is, we shall 
discover as we proceed ; but as an invading army should 
not leave an untaken fortress in its rear, we must not go 
on with our inquiry into the views of Reynolds until 
we have settled satisfactorily the question already sug- 
gested to us, in what the essence of poetical treatment 
really consists. For though, as we have seen, it cer- 
tainly involves the addition of specific details, it can- 
not be simply that addition which turns the history into 
poetry. For it is perfectly possible to add any number 
of details to a historical statement, and to make it more 
prosaic with every added word. As, for instance, " The 
lake was sounded out of a flat-bottomed boat, near the 
crab-tree at the corner of the kitchen-garden, and was 
found to be a thousand feet nine inches deep, with a 



32 MODERN PAINTERS 

muddy bottom." It thus appears that it is not the mul- 
tiplication of details which constitutes poetry ; nor their 
subtraction which constitutes history, but that there 
must be something either in the nature of the details 
themselves, or the method of using them, which invests 
them with poetical power or historical propriety. 

It seems to me, and may seem to the reader, strange 
that we should need to ask the question, "What is 
poetry ? " Here is a word we have been using all our 
lives, and, I suppose, with a very distinct idea attached 
to it ; and when I am now called upon to give a defini- 
tion of this idea, I find myself at a pause. What is more 
singular, I do not at present recollect hearing the ques- 
tion often asked, though surely it is a very natural one; 
and I never recollect hearing it answered, or even 
attempted to be answered. In general, people shelter 
themselves under metaphors, and while we hear poetry 
described as an utterance of the soul, an effusion of 
Divinity, or voice of nature, or in other terms equally 
elevated and obscure, we never attain anything like 
a definite explanation of the character which actually 
distinguishes it from prose. 

I come, after some embarrassment, to the conclusion, 
that poetry is "the suggestion, by the imagination, of 
noble grounds for the noble emotions." ^ I mean, by 
the noble emotions, those four principal sacred pas- 
sions — Love, Veneration, Admiration, and Joy (this 
latter especially, if unselfish) ; and their opposites — 
Hatred, Indignation (or Scorn), Horror, and Grief, — 
this last, when unselfish, becoming Compassion. These 
passions in their various combinations constitute what 
is called " poetical feeling," when they are felt on noble 
grounds, that is, on great and true grounds. Indigna- 

' Ruskin later wrote: *Tt leaves out rhythm, which I now con- 
sider a defect in said definition: otherwise good." 



THE GRAND STYLE 33 

tion, for instance, is a poetical feeling, if excited by seri- 
ous injury ; but it is not a poetical feeling if entertained 
on being cheated out of a small sum of money. It is 
very possible the manner of the cheat may have been 
such as to justify considerable indignation; but the 
feeling is nevertheless not poetical unless the grounds 
of it be large as well as just. In like manner, energetic 
admiration may be excited in certain minds by a dis- 
play of fireworks, or a street of handsome shops ; but 
the feeling is not poetical, because the grounds of it are 
false, and therefore ignoble. There is in reality nothing 
to deserve admiration either in the firing of packets of 
gunpowder, or in the display of the stocks of ware- 
houses. But admiration excited by the budding of a 
flower is a poetical feeling, because it is impossible that 
this manifestation of spiritual power and vital beauty 
can ever be enough admired. 

Farther, it is necessary to the existence of poetry that 
the grounds of these feelings should he furnished by the 
imagination. Poetical feeling, that is to say, mere noble 
emotion, is not poetry. It is happily inherent in all 
human nature deserving the name, and is found often 
to be purest in the least sophisticated. But the power of 
assembling, by the help of the imagination, such Images 
as will excite these feelings, is the power of the poet or 
literally of the " Maker." ' 

* Take, for instance, the beautiful stanza in the Ajfliciion of 
Margaret : 

I look for ghosts, but none will force 
Their way to me. 'T is falsely said 

That ever there was intercourse 
Between the living and the dead; 

For, surely, then, I should have sight 

Of him I wait for, day and night. 

With love and longing infinite. 

This we call Poetry, because it is invented or made by the writer, 



34 MODERN PAINTERS 

Now this power of exciting the emotions depends of 
course on the richness of the imagination, and on its 
choice of those images which, in combination, will be 
most effective, or, for the particular work to be done, 
most fit. And it is altogether impossible for a writer not 
endowed with invention to conceive what tools a true 
poet will make use of, or in what way he will apply them, 
or what unexpected results he will bring out by them ; 
so that it is vain to say that the details of poetry ought 
to possess, or ever do possess, any definite character. 
Generally speaking, poetry runs into finer and more 
delicate details than prose; but the details are not 
poetical because they are more delicate, but because 

entering into the mind of a supposed person. Next, take an instance 
of the actual feeling truly experienced and simply expressed by a 
real person. 

"Nothing surprised me more than a woman of Argentiere, whose 
cottage I went into to ask for milk, as I came down from the glacier 
of Argentiere, in the month of March, 1764. An epidemic dysentery 
had prevailed in the village, and, a few months before, had taken 
away from her, her father, her husband, and her brothers, so that she 
was left alone, with three children in the cradle. Her face had some- 
thing noble in it, and its expression bore the seal of a calm and pro- 
found sorrow. After having given me milk, she asked me whence I 
came, and what I came there to do, so early in the year. When she 
knew that I was of Geneva, she said to me, 'she could not believe 
that all Protestants were lost souls; that there were many honest 
people among us, and that God was too good and too great to con- 
demn all without distinction.' Then, after a moment of reflection, 
she added, in shaking her head, 'But that which is very strange is 
that of so many who have gone away, none have ever returned. I,' 
she added, with an expression of grief, 'who have so mourned my 
husband and my brothers, who have never ceased to think of them, 
who every night conjure them with beseechings to tell me where they 
are, and in what state they are! Ah, surely, if they lived anywhere, 
they would not leave me thus! But, perhaps,' she added, 'I am not 
worthy of this kindness, perhaps the pure and innocent spirits of 
these children,' and she looked at the cradle, 'may have their pre- 
sence, and the joy which is denied to me.'' " — Saussure, Voyages 
dans les Alpes, chap, xx-iv. 

This we do not call Poetry, merely because it is not invented, but 
the true utterance of a real person. [Ruskin.] 



THE GRAND STYLE 35 

they are employed so as to bring out an affecting result. 
For instance, no one but a true poet would have thought 
of exciting our pity for a bereaved father by describing 
his way of locking the door of his house : 

Perhaps to himself at that moment he said. 
The key I must take, for my Ellen is dead; 
But of this in my ears not a word did he speak; 
And he went to the chase with a tear on his cheek. ^ 

In like manner, in painting, it is altogether impossible 
to say beforehand what details a great painter may 
make poetical by his use of them to excite noble emo- 
tions : and we shall, therefore, find presently that a 
painting is to be classed in the great or inferior schools, 
not according to the kind of details which it repre- 
sents, but according to the uses for which it employs 
them. 

It is only farther to be noticed, that infinite confusion 
has been introduced into this subject by the careless and 
illogical custom of opposing painting to poetry, instead 
of regarding poetry as consisting in a noble use, whether 
of colours or words. Painting is properly to be opposed 
to speaking or writing, but not to poetry. Both paint- 
ing and speaking are methods of expression. Poetry is 
the employment of either for the noblest purposes. 

This question being thus far determined, we may 
proceed with our paper in the Idler. 

" It is very difficult to determine the exact degree of 
enthusiasm that the arts of Painting and Poetry may 
admit. There may, perhaps, be too great indulgence as 
well as too great a restraint of imagination ; if the one 
produces incoherent monsters, the other produces what 
is full as bad, hfeless insipidity. An intimate knowledge 
of the passions, and good sense, but not common sense, 
^ The closing lines of Wordsworth's Childless Father. 



36 MODERN PAINTERS 

must at last determine its limits. It has been thought, 
and I believe with reason, that Michael Angelo some- 
times transgressed those limits; and, I think, I have 
seen figures of him of which it was very difficult to 
determine whether they were in the highest degree 
sublime or extremely ridiculous. Such faults may be 
said to be the ebullitions of genius ; but at least he had 
this merit, that he never was insipid ; and whatever 
passion his works may excite, they will always escape 
contempt. 

"What I have had under consideration is the sub- 
limest style, particularly that of Michael Angelo, the 
Homer of painting. Other kinds may admit of this 
naturalness, which of the lowest kind is the chief merit ; 
but in painting, as in poetry, the highest style has the 
least of common nature." 

From this passage we gather three important indica- 
tions of the supposed nature of the Great Style. That 
it is the work of men in a state of enthusiasm. That it is 
like the writing of Homer ; and that it has as little as 
possible of "common nature" in it. 

First, it is produced by men in a state of enthusiasm. 
That is, by men who feel strongly and nobly ; for we do 
not call a strong feeling of envy, jealousy, or ambition, 
enthusiasm. That is, therefore, by men who feel poet- 
ically. This much we may admit, I think, with perfect 
safety. Great art is produced by men who feel acutely 
and nobly ; and it is in some sort an expression of this 
personal feeling. We can easily conceive that there may 
be a sufficiently marked distinction between such art, 
and that which is produced by men who do not feel at 
all, but who reproduce, though ever so accurately, yet 
coldly, like human mirrors, the scenes which pass before 
their eyes. 



I 



I 



THE GRAND STYLE 37 

Secondly, Great Art is like the writing of Homer, and 
this chiefly because it has little of " common nature " in 
it. We are not clearly informed what is meant by com- 
mon nature in this passage. Homer seems to describe 
a great deal of what is common : — cookery, for in- 
stance, very carefully in all its processes.^ I suppose the 
passage in the Iliad which, on the whole, has excited 
most admiration, is that which describes a wife's sor- 
row at parting from her husband, and a child's fright 
at its father's helmet;^ and I hope, at least, the former 
feeling may be considered " common nature." But the 
true greatness of Homer's style is, doubtless, held by 
our author to consist in his imaginations of things not 
only uncommon but impossible (such as spirits in 
brazen armour, or monsters with heads of men and 
bodies of beasts), and in his occasional dehneations 
of the human character and form in their utmost, or 
heroic, strength and beauty. We gather then on the 
whole, that a painter in the Great Style must be enthu- 
siastic, or full of emotion, and must paint the human 
form in its utmost strength and beauty, and perhaps 
certain impossible forms besides, liable by persons not 
in an equally enthusiastic state of mind to be looked 
upon as in some degree absurd. This I presume to be 
Reynolds's meaning, and to be all that he intends us to 
gather from his comparison of the Great Style with the 
writings of Homer. But if that comparison be a just 
one in all respects, surely two other corollaries ought to 
be drawn from it, namely, — first, that these Heroic or 
Impossible images are to be mingled with others very 
unheroic and very possible; and, secondly, that in the 
representation of the Heroic or Impossible forms, the 

1 Iliad, 1. 463 flF., 2. 425 ff.; Odyssey. 3. 455 ff., etc. 

2 Iliad, 6. 468 ft'. 



38 MODERN PAINTERS 

greatest care must be taken in finishing the details^ so 
that a painter must not be satisfied with painting well 
the countenance and the body of his hero, but ought to 
spend the greatest part of his time (as Homer the great- 
est number of verses) in elaborating the sculptured pat- 
tern on his shield. 

Let us, however, proceed with our paper. 

" One may very safely recommend a little more enthu- 
siasm to the modern Painters ; too much is certainly not 
the vice of the present age. The Italians seem to have 
been continually declining in this respect, from the time 
of Michael Angelo to that of Carlo Maratti,^ and from 
thence to the very bathos of insipidity to which they are 
now sunk ; so that there is no need of remarking, that 
where I mentioned the Italian painters in opposition to 
the Dutch, I mean not the moderns, but the heads of the 
old Roman and Bolognian schools ; nor did I mean to 
include, in my idea of an Italian painter, the Venetian 
school, which may he said to he the Dutch fart of the 
Italian genius. I have only to add a word of advice to 
the Painters, — that, however excellent they may be 
in painting naturally, they would not flatter themselves 
very much upon it ; and to the Connoisseurs, that when 
they see a cat or a fiddle painted so finely, that, as the 
phrase is, it looks as if you could take it up, they would 
not for that reason immediately compare the Painter 
to Raffaelle and Michael Angelo." 

In this passage there are four points chiefly to be 
remarked. The first, that in the year 1759 the Italian 
painters were, in our author's opinion, sunk in the very 
bathos of insipidity. The second, that the Venetian 
painters, i. e. Titian, Tintoret, and Veronese, are, in 
our author's opinion, to be classed with the Dutch ; that 
1 1625-1713, Known also as Carlo delie Madonne. 



OF REALIZATION S9 

is to say, are painters in a style " in which the slowest 
intellect is always sure to succeed best." Thirdly, that 
painting naturally is not a difficult thing, nor one on 
which a painter should pride himself. And, finally, 
that connoisseurs, seeing a cat or a fiddle successfully 
painted, ought not therefore immediately to compare 
the painter to Raphael or Michael Angelo. 

Yet Raphael painted fiddles very carefully in the 
foreground of his St. Cecilia, — so carefully, that they 
quite look as if they might be taken up. So carefully, 
that I never yet looked at the picture without wishing 
that somebody would take them up, and out of the way. 
And I am under a very strong persuasion that Raphael 
did not think painting "naturally" an easy thing. It 
will be well to examine into this point a little; and for 
the present, with the reader's permission, we will pass 
over the first two statements in this passage (touching 
the character of Italian art in 1759, and of Venetian art 
in general), and immediately examine some of the evi- 
dence existing as to the real dignity of " natural " paint- 
ing — that is to say, of painting carried to the point at 
which it reaches a deceptive appearance of reality. 



OF REALIZATION 

Volume III, Chapter 2 

In the outset of this inquiry, the reader must thor- 
oughly understand that we are not now considering 
what is to be painted, but how far it is to be painted. 
Not whether Raphael does right in representing angels 
playing upon violins, or whether Veronese does right in 
allowing cats and monkeys to join the company of kings : 
but whether, supposing the subjects rightly chosen. 



40 MODERN PAINTERS 

they ought on the canvas to look like real angels with 
real violins, and substantial cats looking at veritable 
kings; or only like imaginary angels with soundless 
violins, ideal cats, and unsubstantial kings. 

Now, from the first moment when painting began to 
be a subject of literary inquiry and general criticism, I 
cannot remember any writer, not professedly artistical, 
who has not, more or less, in one part of his book or 
another, countenanced the idea that the great end of art 
is to produce a deceptive resemblance of reality. It may 
be, indeed, that we shall find the writers, through many 
pages, explaining principles of ideal beauty, and pro- 
fessing great delight in the evidences of imagination. 
But whenever a picture is to be definitely described, — 
whenever the writer desires to convey to others some 
impression of an extraordinary excellence, all praise is 
wound up with some such statements as these : " It 
was so exquisitely painted that you expected the figures 
to move and speak ; you approached the flowers to enjoy 
their smell, and stretched your hand towards the fruit 
which had fallen from the branches. You shrunk back 
lest the sword of the warrior should indeed descend, 
and turned away your head that you might not witness 
the agonies of the expiring martyr." 

In a large number of instances, language such as this 
will be found to be merely a clumsy effort to convey to 
others a sense of the admiration, of which the writer 
does not understand the real cause in himself. A person 
is attracted to a picture by the beauty of its colour, in- 
terested by the liveliness of its story, and touched by 
certain countenances or details which remind him of 
friends whom he loved, or scenes in which he delighted. 
He naturally supposes that what gives him so much • 
pleasure must be a notable example of the painter's 



OF REALIZATION 41 

skill ; but he is ashamed to confess, or perhaps does not 
know, that he is so much a child as to be fond of bright 
colours and amusing incidents; and he is quite uncon- 
scious of the associations which have so secret and 
inevitable a power over his heart. He casts about for 
the cause of his delight, and can discover no other than 
that he thought the picture like reality. 

In another, perhaps, a still larger number of cases, 
such language will be found to be that of simple igno- 
rance — the ignorance of persons whose position in life 
compels them to speak of art, without having any real 
enjoyment of it. It is inexcusably required from people 
of the world, that they should see merit in Claudes ^ and 
Titians; and the only merit which many persons can 
either see or conceive in them is, that they must be 
"hke nature." 

In other cases, the deceptive power of the art is really 
felt to be a source of interest and amusement. This is 
the case with a large number of the collectors of Dutch 
pictures. They enjoy seeing what is flat made to look 
round, exactly as a child enjoys a trick of legerdemain : 
they rejoice in flies which the spectator vainly attempts 
to brush away,^ and in dew which he endeavours to dry 
by putting the picture in the sun. They take it for the 
greatest compliment to their treasures that they should 
be mistaken for windows; and think the parting of 
Abraham and Hagar adequately represented if Hagar 
seems to be really crying.^ 

^ Claude Gelee [1600-82], usually called Claude Lorrain, a French 
landscape painter and etcher. 

2 Vasari, in his Lives of the Painters, tells how Giotto, when a 
student under Cimabue, once painted a fly on the nose of a figure on 
which the master was working, the fly being so realistic that Cima- 
bue on returning to the painting attempted to brush it away. 

^ Guercino's Hagar in the Brera gallery in Milan. 



42 MODERN PAINTERS 

It is against critics and connoisseurs of this latter 
stamp (of whom, in the year 1759, the juries of art were 
for the most part composed) that the essay of Reynolds, 
which we have been examining, was justly directed. 
But Reynolds had not sufficiently considered that 
neither the men of this class, nor of the two other 
classes above described, constitute the entire body of 
those who praise Art for its realization ; and that the 
holding of this apparently shallow and vulgar opinion 
cannot, in all cases, be attributed to the want either 
of penetration, sincerity, or sense. The collectors of 
Gerard Dows and Hobbimas may be passed by with a 
smile ; and the affectations of Walpole and simplicities 
of Vasari ^ dismissed with contempt or with compas- 
sion. But very different men from these have held pre- 
cisely the same language; and, one amongst the rest, 
whose authority is absolutely, and in all points, over- 
whelming. 

There was probably never a period in which the influ- 
ence of art over the minds of men seemed to depend less 
on its merely imitative power, than the close of the 
thirteenth century. No painting or sculpture at that 
time reached more than a rude resemblance of reality. 
Its despised perspective, imperfect chiaroscuro, and 
unrestrained flights of fantastic imagination, separated 
the artist's work from nature by an interval which there 
was no attempt to disguise, and little to diminish. And 
yet, at this very period, the greatest poet of that, or 
perhaps of any other age, and the attached friend of its 
greatest painter,^ who must over and over again have 

1 Gerard Dow [1613-75], a Dutch genre painter; Hobbima [1638- 
1709], a Dutch landscape painter; Walpole [1717-97], a famous 
English litterateur; Vasari [1511-74], an Italian painter, now con- 
sidered full of mannerisms and without originality, mainly famous 
as author of The Lives of the Painters. 

2 Giotto. 



OF REALIZATION 43 

held full and free conversation with him respecting the 
objects of his art, speaks in the following terms of 
painting, supposed to be carried to its highest perfec- 
tion : 

Qual di pennel fu maestro, e di stile 
Che ritraesse 1' ombre, e i tratti, ch' ivi 
Mirar farieno uno ingegno sottile? 

Morti li morti, e i vivi parean vivi: 
Non vide me' di me, chi vide il vero, 
Quant' io calcai, fin che chinato givi. 

Dante, Purgatorio, canto xii. 1. 64. 

What master of the pencil, or the style. 

Had traced the shades and lines that might have made 

The subtlest workman wonder ? Dead, the dead. 

The living seemed alive ; with clearer view 

His eye beheld not, who beheld the truth. 

Than mine what I did tread on, while I went 

Low bending. — Gary. 

Dante has here clearly no other idea of the highest 
art than that it should bring back, as in a mirror or 
vision, the aspect of things passed or absent. The 
scenes of which he speaks are, on the pavement, for 
ever represented by angelic power, so that the souls 
which traverse this circle of the rock may see them, as 
if the years of the world had been rolled back, and they 
again stood beside the actors in the moment of action. 
Nor do I think that Dante's authority is absolutely 
necessary to compel us to admit that such art as this 
might, indeed, be the highest possible. Whatever de- 
light we may have been in the habit of taking in pic- 
tures, if it were but truly offered to us, to remove at our 
will the canvas from the frame, and in lieu of it to 
behold, fixed for ever, the image of some of those mighty 
scenes which it has been our way to make mere themes 



44 MODERN PAINTERS 

for the artist's fancy ; if, for instance, we could again 
behold the Magdalene receiving her pardon at Christ's 
feet, or the disciples sitting with Him at the table of 
Emmaus ; and this not feebly nor fancifully, but as if 
some silver mirror that had leaned against the wall of 
the chamber, had been miraculously commanded to 
retain for ever the colours that had flashed upon it for 
an instant, — would we not part with our picture — 
Titian's or Veronese's though it might be ? 

Yes, the reader answers, in the instance of such 
scenes as these, but not if the scene represented were 
uninteresting. Not, indeed, if it were utterly vulgar or 
painful ; but we are not yet certain that the art which 
represents what is vulgar or painful is itself of much 
value ; and with respect to the art whose aim is beauty, 
even of an inferior order, it seems that Dante's idea of 
its perfection has still much evidence in its favour. For 
among persons of native good sense, and courage 
enough to speak their minds, we shall often find a con- 
siderable degree of doubt as to the use of art, in conse- 
quence of their habitual comparison of it with reality. 
"What is the use, to me, of the painted landscape.'^" 
they will ask : " I see more beautiful and perfect land- 
scapes every day of my life in my forenoon walk." 
" What is the use, to me, of the painted effigy of hero or 
beauty .'^ I can see a stamp of higher heroism, and light 
of purer beauty, on the faces round me, utterly in- 
expressible by the highest human skill." Now, it is 
evident that to persons of this temper the only valu- 
able picture would, indeed, be mirrors, reflecting per- 
manently the images of the things in which they took 
delight, and of the faces that they loved. "Nay," but 
the reader interrupts (if he is of the Idealist school), "I 
deny that more beautiful things are to be seen in nature 



OF REALIZATION 45 

than in art; on the contrary, everything in nature is 
faulty, and art represents nature as perfected." Be it 
so. Must, therefore, this perfected nature be imperfectly 
represented ? Is it absolutely required of the painter, 
who has conceived perfection, that he should so paint 
it as to look only like a picture ? Or is not Dante's view 
of the matter right even here, and would it not be well 
that the perfect conception of Pallas should be so given 
as to look like Pallas herself, rather than merely like the 
picture of Pallas ? ^ 

It is not easy for us to answer this question rightly, 
owing to the difficulty of imagining any art which 
should reach the perfection supposed. Our actual 
powers of imitation are so feeble that wherever decep- 
tion is attempted, a subject of a comparatively low or 
confined order must be chosen. I do not enter at pre- 
sent into the inquiry how far the powers of imitation 
extend; but assuredly up to the present period they 
have been so limited that it is hardly possible for us to 
conceive a deceptive art embracing a high range of sub- 
ject. But let the reader make the effort, and consider 
seriously what he would give at any moment to have 
the power of arresting the fairest scenes, those which so 
often rise before him only to vanish ; to stay the cloud in 
its fading, the leaf in its trembling, and the shadows in 
their changing ; to bid the fitful foam be fixed upon the 
river, and the ripples be everlasting upon the lake ; and 
then to bear away with him no darkened or feeble sun- 
stain (though even that is beautiful), but a counterfeit 
which should seem no counterfeit — the true and perfect 
image of life indeed. Or rather (for the full majesty of 
such a power is not thus sufficiently expressed) let him 
KJonsider that it would be in effect nothing else than a 
1 Purgaiorio, 12. 31. 



46 MODERN PAINTERS 

capacity of transporting himself at any moment into 
any scene — a gift as great as can be possessed by a dis- 
embodied spirit: and suppose, also, this necromancy 
embracing not only the present but the past, and en- 
abling us seemingly to enter into the very bodily pre- 
sence of men long since gathered to the dust ; to behold 
them in act as they lived, but — with greater privilege 
than ever was granted to the companions of those 
transient acts of life — to see them fastened at our will 
in the gesture and expression of an instant, and stayed, 
on the eve of some great deed, in immortality of burn- 
ing purpose. Conceive, so far as it is possible, such 
power as this, and then say whether the art which con- 
ferred it is to be spoken lightly of, or whether we should 
not rather reverence, as half divine, a gift which would 
go so far as to raise us into the rank, and invest us with 
the felicities, of angels ? 

Yet such would imitative art be in its perfection. 
Not by any means an easy thing, as Reynolds supposes 
it. Far from being easy, it is so utterly beyond all hu- 
man power that we have difficulty even in conceiving 
its nature or results — the bes^t art we as yet possess 
comes so far short of it. 

But we must not rashly come to the conclusion that 
such art would, indeed, be the highest possible. There 
is much to be considered hereafter on the other side; 
the only conclusion we are as yet warranted in forming 
is, that Reynolds had no right to speak lightly or con- 
temptuously of imitative art; that in fact, when he did 
so, he had not conceived its entire nature, but was 
thinking of some vulgar conditions of it, which were the 
only ones known to him, and that, therefore, his whole 
endeavour to explain the difference between great and. 
mean art has been disappointed ; that he has involved 



OF REALIZATION 47 

himself in a crowd of theories, whose issue he had not 
foreseen, and committed himself to conclusions which 
he never intended. There is an instinctive conscious- 
ness in his own mind of the difference between high and 
low art ; but he is utterly incapable of explaining it, and 
every effort which he makes to do so involves him in 
unexpected fallacy and absurdity. It is not true that 
Poetry does not concern herself with minute details. It 
is not true that high art seeks only the Invariable. It is 
not true that imitative art is an easy thing. It is not true 
that the faithful rendering of nature is an employment 
in which " the slowest intellect is likely to succeed best." 
All these successive assertions are utterly false and un- 
tenable, while the plain truth, a truth lying at the very 
door, has all the while escaped him, — that which was 
incidentally stated in the preceding chapter, — namely, 
that the difference between great and mean art lies, not 
in definable methods of handling, or styles of represen- 
tation, or choices of subjects, but wholly in the noble- 
ness of the end to which the effort of the painter is ad- 
dressed. We cannot say that a painter is great because 
he paints boldly, or paints delicately ; because he gen- 
eralizes or particularizes; because he loves detail, or 
because he disdains it. He is great if, by any of these 
means, he has laid open noble truths, or aroused noble 
emotions. It does not matter whether he paint the petal 
of a rose, or the chasms of a precipice, so that Love and 
Admiration attend him as he labours, and wait for ever 
upon his work. It does not matter whether he toil for 
months upon a few inches of his canvas, or cover a 
palace front with colour in a day, so only that it be with 
a solemn purpose that he has filled his heart w^ith pa- 
tience, or urged his hand to haste. And it does not mat- 
ter whether he seek for his subjects among peasants or 



48 . MODERN PAINTERS 

nobles, among the heroic or the simple, in courts or in 
fields, so only that he behold all things with a thirst for 
beauty, and a hatred of meanness and vice. There are, 
indeed, certain methods of representation which are 
usually adopted by the most active minds, and certain 
characters of subject usually delighted in by the noblest 
hearts; but it is quite possible, quite easy, to adopt the 
manner of painting without sharing the activity of 
mind, and to imitate the choice of subject without pos- 
sessing the nobility of spirit; while, on the other hand, 
it is altogether impossible to foretell on what strange 
objects the strength of a great man will sometimes be 
concentrated, or by what strange means he will some- 
times express himself. So that true criticism of art never 
can consist in the mere application of rules; it can be 
just only when it is founded on quick sympathy with 
the innumerable instincts and changeful efforts of 
human nature, chastened and guided by unchanging 
love of all things that God has created to be beautiful, 
and pronounced to be good. 

OF THE NOVELTY OF LANDSCAPE 
Volume III, Chapter 11 

Having now obtained, I trust, clear ideas, up to a 
certain point, of what is generally right and wrong in all 
art, both in conception and in workmanship, we have to 
apply these laws of right to the particular branch of art 
which is the subject of our present inquiry, namely, 
landscape-painting. Respecting which, after the vari- 
ous meditations into which we have been led on the 
high duties and ideals of art, it may not improbably 
occur to us first to ask, — whether it be worth inquir- 
ing about at all. 



OF THE NOVELTY OF LANDSCAPE 49 

That question, perhaps the reader thinks, should 
have been asked and answered before I had written, or 
he read, two volumes and a half about it. So I had 
answered it, in my own mind ; but it seems time now to 
give the grounds for this answer. If, indeed, the reader 
has never suspected that landscape-painting was any- 
thing but good, right, and healthy work, I should be 
sorry to put any doubt of its being so into his mind ; but 
if, as seems to me more likely, he, living in this busy and 
perhaps somewhat calamitous age, has some suspicion 
that landscape-painting is but an idle and empty busi- 
ness, not worth all our long talk about it, then, perhaps, 
he will be pleased to have such suspicion done away, 
before troubling himself farther with these disquisi- 
tions. 

I should rather be glad, than otherwise, that he had 
formed some suspicion on this matter. If he has at all 
admitted the truth of anything hitherto said respecting 
great art, and its choices of subject, it seems to me 
he ought, by this time, to be questioning with himself 
whether road-side weeds, old cottages, broken stones, 
and such other materials, be worthy matters for grave 
men to busy themselves in the imitation of. And I 
should like him to probe this doubt to the deep of it, 
and bring all his misgivings out to the broad light, 
that we may see how we are to deal with them, or as- 
certain if indeed they are too well founded to be dealt 
with. 

And to this end I would ask him now to imagine him- 
self entering, for the first time in his life, the room of 
the Old Water-Colour Society : ^ and to suppose that he 

* The Society of Painters in Water-Colours, often referred to as 
the Old Water-Colour Society. Ruskin was elected an honorary 
member in 1873. 



50 MODERN PAINTERS 

has entered it, not for the sake of a quiet examination of 
the paintings one by one, but in order to seize such 
ideas as it may generally suggest respecting the state 
and meaning of modern, as compared with elder, art. 
I suppose him, of course, that he may be capable of 
such a comparison, to be in some degree familiar with 
the different forms in which art has developed itself 
within the periods historically known to us ; but never, 
till that moment, to have seen any completely modern 
work. So prepared, and so unprepared, he would, as 
his ideas began to arrange themselves, be first struck 
by the number of paintings representing blue moun- 
tains, clear lakes, and ruined castles or cathedrals, and 
he would say to himself : " There is something strange 
in the mind of these modern people 1 Nobody ever cared 
about blue mountains before, or tried to paint the 
broken stones of old walls." And the more he con- 
sidered the subject, the more he would feel the pecul- 
iarity; and, as he thought over the art of Greeks and 
Romans, he would still repeat, with increasing certainty 
of conviction : " Mountains ! I remember none. The 
Greeks did not seem, as artists, to know that such 
things were in the world. They carved, or variously 
represented, men, and horses, and beasts, and birds, 
and all kinds of living creatures, — yes, even down to 
cuttle-fish ; and trees, in a sort of way ; but not so much 
as the outline of a mountain; and as for lakes, they 
merely showed they knew the difference between salt 
and fresh water by the fish they put into each." Then 
he would pass on to mediaeval art ; and still he would be 
obliged to repeat: "Mountains! I remember none. 
Some careless and jagged arrangements of blue spires 
or spikes on the horizon, and, here and there, an at- 
tempt at representing an overhanging rock with a hole 



OF THE NOVELTY OF LANDSCAPE 51 

through it; but merely in order to divide the light 
behind some human figure. Lakes ! No, nothing of the 
kind, — only blue bays of sea put in to fill up the back- 
ground when the painter could not think of anything 
else. Broken-down buildings! No; for the most part 
very complete and well-appointed buildings, if any ; and 
never buildings at all, but to give place or explanation 
to some circumstance of human conduct." And then 
he would look up again to the modern pictures, ob- 
serving, with an increasing astonishment, that here the 
human interest had, in many cases, altogether disap- 
peared. That mountains, instead of being used only as 
a blue ground for the relief of the heads of saints, were 
themselves the exclusive subjects of reverent contem- 
plation ; that their ravines, and peaks, and forests, 
were all painted with an appearance of as much enthu- 
siasm as had formerly been devoted to the dimple of 
beauty, or the frowns of asceticism; and that all the 
living interest which was still supposed necessary to the 
scene, might be supplied by a traveller in a slouched hat, 
a beggar in a scarlet cloak, or, in default of these, even 
by a heron or a wild duck. 

And if he could entirely divest himself of his own 
modern habits of thought, and regard the subjects 
in question with the feelings of a knight or monk of 
the Middle Ages, it might be a question whether those 
feelings would not rapidly verge towards contempt. 
"What!" he might perhaps mutter to himself, "here 
are human beings spending the whole of their Hves in 
making pictures of bits of stone and runlets of water, 
withered sticks and flying fogs, and actually not a pic- 
ture of the gods or the heroes ! none of the saints or the 
martyrs! none of the angels and demons! none of 
councils or battles, or any other single thing worth the 



52 MODERN PAINTERS 

thought of a man ! Trees and clouds indeed ! as if I 
should not see as many trees as I cared to see, and more, 
in the first half of my day's journey to-morrow, or as if 
it mattered to any man whether the sky were clear or 
cloudy, so long as his armour did not get too hot in the 
sun ! " 

There can be no question that this would have been 
somewhat the tone of thought with which either a 
Lacedsemonian, a soldier of Rome in her strength, or a 
knight of the thirteenth century, would have been apt 
to regard these particular forms of our present art. Nor 
can there be any question that, in many respects, their 
judgment would have been just. It is true that the 
indignation of the Spartan or Roman would have been 
equally excited against any appearance of luxurious 
industry; but the mediaeval knight would, to the full, 
have admitted the nobleness of art ; only he would have 
had it employed in decorating his church or his prayer- 
book, not in imitating moors and clouds. And the feel- 
ings of all the three would have agreed in this, — that 
their main ground of offence must have been the want 
of seriousness and purpose in what they saw. They 
would all have admitted the nobleness of whatever con- 
duced to the honour of the gods, or the power of the 
nation; but they would not have understood how the 
skill of human life could be wisely spent in that which 
did no honour either to Jupiter or to the Virgin ; and 
which in no wise tended, apparently, either to the 
accumulation of wealth, the excitement of patriotism, 
or the advancement of morality. 

And exactly so far forth their judgment would be 
just, as the landscape-painting could indeed be shown, 
for others as well as for them, to be art of this nugatory 
kind ; and so far forth unjust, as that painting could be 



OF THE NOVELTY OF LANDSCAPE 53 

shown to depend upon, or cultivate, certain sensibilities 
which neither the Greek nor mediseval knight pos- 
sessed, and which have resulted from some extraor- 
dinary change in human nature since their time. We 
have no right to assume, without very accurate exam- 
ination of it, that this change has been an ennobling 
one. The simple fact, that we are, in some strange way, 
different from all the great races that have existed be- 
fore us, cannot at once be received as the proof of our 
own greatness; nor can it be granted, without any 
question, that we have a legitimate subject of compla- 
cency in being under the influence of feelings, with 
which neither Miltiades nor the Black Prince, neither 
Homer nor Dante, neither Socrates nor St. Francis, 
could for an instant have sympathized. 

Whether, however, this fact be one to excite our pride 
or not, it is assuredly one to excite our deepest interest. 
The fact itself is certain. For nearly six thousand years 
the energies of man have pursued certain beaten paths, 
manifesting some constancy of feeling throughout all 
that period, and involving some fellowship at heart, 
among the various nations who by turns succeeded or 
surpassed each other in the several aims of art or policy. 
So that, for these thousands of years, the whole human 
race might be to some extent described in general 
terms. Man was a creature separated from all others 
by his instinctive sense of an Existence superior to his 
own, invariably manifesting this sense of the being of a 
God more strongly in proportion to his own perfectness 
of mind and body; and making enormous and self- 
denying efforts, in order to obtain some persuasion of 
the immediate presence or approval of the Divinity, 
So that, on the whole, the best things he did were done 
as in the presence, or for the honour, of his gods ; and, 



54 MODERN PAINTERS 

whether in statues, to help him to imagine them, or 
temples raised to their honour, or acts of self-sacrifice 
done in the hope of their love, he brought whatever was 
best and skilfullest in him into their service, and lived in 
a perpetual subjection to their unseen power. Also, he 
was always anxious to know something definite about 
them; and his chief books, songs, and pictures were 
filled with legends about them, or specially devoted to 
illustration of their lives and nature. 

Next to these gods, he was always anxious to know 
something about his human ancestors ; fond of exalting 
the memory, and telling or painting the history of old 
rulers and benefactors ; yet full of an enthusiastic con- 
fidence in himself, as having in many ways advanced 
beyond the best efforts of past time ; and eager to record 
his own doings for future fame. He was a creature 
eminently warlike, placing his principal pride in do- 
minion; eminently beautiful, and having great delight 
in his own beauty; setting forth this beauty by every 
species of invention in dress, and rendering his arms 
and accoutrements superbly decorative of his form. 
He took, however, very little interest in anything but 
what belonged to humanity; caring in no wise for the 
external world, except as it influenced his own destiny; 
honouring the lightning because it could strike him, the 
sea because it could drown him, the fountains because 
they gave him drink, and the grass because it yielded 
him seed ; but utterly incapable of feeling any special 
happiness in the love of such things, or any earnest 
emotion about them, considered as separate from man ; 
therefore giving no time to the study of them ; — know- 
ing little of herbs, except only which were hurtful and 
which healing; of stones, only which would glitter 
brightest in a crown, or last the longest in a wall : of the 



OF THE NOVELTY OF LANDSCAPE 55 

wild beasts, which were best for food, and which the 
stoutest quarry for the hunter; — thus spending only 
on the lower creatures and inanimate things his waste 
energy, his dullest thoughts, his most languid emotions, 
and reserving all his acuter intellect for researches into 
his own nature and that of the gods ; all his strength of 
will for the acquirement of political or moral power ; all 
his sense of beauty for things immediately connected 
with his own person and Hfe ; and all his deep affections 
for domestic or divine companionship. 

Such, in broad light and brief terms, was man for 
five thousand years. Such he is no longer. Let us con- 
sider what he is now, comparing the descriptions clause 
by clause. 

I. He was invariably sensible of the existence of gods, 
and went about all his speculations or works holding 
this as an acknowledged fact, making his best efforts in 
their service. Now he is capable of going through life 
with hardly any positive idea on this subject, — doubt- 
ing, fearing, suspecting, analyzing, — doing every- 
thing, in fact, but believing ; hardly ever getting quite up 
to that point which hitherto was wont to be the starting- 
point for all generations. And human work has accord- 
ingly hardly any reference to spiritual beings, but is 
done either from a patriotic or personal interest, — 
either to benefit mankind, or reach some selfish end, 
not (I speak of human work in the broad sense) to 
please the gods. 

II. He was a beautiful creature, setting forth this 
beauty by all means in his power, and depending upon 
it for much of his authority over his fellows. So that the 
ruddy cheek of David, and the ivory skin of Atrides, 
and the towering presence of Saul, and the blue eyes 
of Coeur de Lion, were among chief reasons why they 



56 MODERN PAINTERS 

should be kings ; and it was one of the aims of all edu- 
cation, and of all dress, to make the presence of the 
human form stately and lovely. Now it has become the 
task of grave philosophy partly to depreciate or conceal 
this bodily beauty ; and even by those who esteem it in 
their hearts, it is not made one of the great ends of edu- 
cation ; man has become, upon the whole, an ugly 
animal, and is not ashamed of his ugliness. 

III. He was eminently warlike. He is now gradually 
becoming more and more ashamed of all the arts and 
aims of battle. So that the desire of dominion, which 
was once frankly confessed or boasted of as a heroic 
passion, is now sternly reprobated or cunningly dis- 
claimed. 

IV. He used to take no interest in anything but what 
immediately concerned himself. Now, he has deep 
interest in the abstract nature of things, inquires as 
eagerly into the laws which regulate the economy of the 
material world, as into those of his own being, and man- 
ifests a passionate admiration of inanimate objects, 
closely resembling, in its elevation and tenderness, the 
affection which he bears to those living souls with 
which he is brought into the nearest fellowship. 

It is this last change only which is to be the subject of 
our present inquiry; but it cannot be doubted that it is 
closely connected with all the others, and that we can 
only thoroughly understand its nature by considering it 
in this connection. For, regarded by itself, we might, 
perhaps, too rashly assume it to be a natural conse- 
quence of the progress of the race. There appears to be 
a diminution of selfishness in it, and a more extended 
and heartfelt desire of understanding the manner of 
God's working; and this the more, because one of the 
permanent characters of this change is a greater accu- 



OF THE NOVELTY OF LANDSCAPE 57 

racy in the statement of external facts. When the eyes 
of men were fixed first upon themselves, and upon na- 
ture solely and secondarily as bearing upon their inter- 
ests, it was of less consequence to them what the ulti- 
mate laws of nature were, than what their immediate 
effects were upon human beings. Hence they could rest 
satisfied with phenomena instead of principles, and 
accepted without scrutiny every fable which seemed 
sufficiently or gracefully to account for those phe- 
nomena. But so far as the eyes of men are now with- 
drawn from themselves, and turned upon the inanimate 
things about them, the results cease to be of impor- 
tance, and the laws become essential. 

In these respects, it might easily appear to us that 
this change was assuredly one of steady and natural 
advance. But when we contemplate the others above 
noted, of which it is clearly one of the branches or con- 
sequences, we may suspect ourselves of over-rashness 
in our self-congratulation, and admit the necessity of a 
scrupulous analysis both of the feeling itself and of its 
tendencies. 

Of course a complete analysis, or anything like it, 
would involve a treatise on the whole history of the 
world. I shall merely endeavour to note some of the 
leading and more interesting circumstances bearing on 
the subject, and to show sufficient practical ground for 
the conclusion, that landscape-painting is indeed a 
noble and useful art, though one not long known by 
man. I shall therefore examine, as best I can, the effect 
of landscape, 1st, on the Classical mind; 2dly, on the 
Mediaeval mind ; and lastly, on the Modern mind. But 
there is one point of some interest respecting the effect 
of it on any mind, which must be settled first; and this 
I will endeavour to do in the next chapter. 



58 MODERN PAINTERS 

OF THE PATHETIC FALLACY » 
Volume III, Chapter 12 

Now, therefore, putting these tiresome and absurd 
words ^ quite out of our way, we may go on at our ease 
to examine the point in question, — namely, the differ- 
ence between the ordinary, proper, and true appear- 
ances of things to us; and the extraordinary, or false 
appearances, when we are under the influence of emo- 
tion, or contemplative fancy; false appearances, I say, 
as being entirely unconnected with any real power or 
character in the object, and only imputed to it by us. 

For instance — 

The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mould 
Naked and shivering, with his cup of gold.^ 

This is very beautiful, and yet very untrue. The 
crocus is not a spendthrift, but a hardy plant ; its yellow 
is not gold, but saffron. How is it that we enjoy so 
much the having it put into our heads that it is any- 
thing else than a plain crocus.? 

It is an important question. For, throughout our 
past reasonings about art, we have always found that 
nothing could be good or useful, or ultimately pleasur- 
able, which was untrue. But here is something plea- 
surable in written poetry which is nevertheless untrue, 

^ Three short sections discussino[ the use of the terms " Objective " 
and "Subjective" have been omitted from the beginning of this 
chapter. 

^ Holmes (Oliver Wendell), quoted by Miss Mitford in her Recol- 
lections of a Literary Life. [Ruskin.] From Astrcea, a Poem de- 
livered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society/ of Yale College. The 
passage in which these lines are found was later published as 
Spring. 



OF THE PATHETIC FALLACY 59 

And what is more, if we think over our favourite 
poetry, we shall find it full of this kind of fallacy, and 
that we like it all the more for being sOo 

It will appear also, on consideration of the matter, 
that this fallacy is of two principal kinds. Either, as in 
this case of the crocus, it is the fallacy of wilful fancy, 
which involves no real expectation that it will be 
believed ; or else it is a fallacy caused by an excited state 
of the feelings, making us, for the time, more or less 
irrational. Of the cheating of the fancy we shall have 
to speak presently; but, in this chapter, I want to 
examine the nature of the other error, that which the 
mind admits when affected strongly by emotion. Thus, 
for instance, in Alton Locke, — 

They rowed her in across the rolling foam — 
The cruel, crawling foam.^ 

The foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl. The 
state of mind which attributes to it these characters of a 
living creature is one in which the reason is unhinged by 
grief. All violent feelings have the same effect. They 
produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of exter- 
nal things, which I would generally characterize as the 
"pathetic fallacy." 

Now we are in the habit of considering this fallacy 
as eminently a character of poetical description, and the 
temper of mind in which we allow it, as one eminently 
poetical, because passionate. But I believe, if we look 
well into the matter, that we shall find the greatest poets 
do not often admit this kind of falseness, — that it is 
only the second order of poets who much delight in it.^ 

^ Kingsley's Alton Locke, chap. 26. 

^ I admit two orders of poets, but no third ; and by these two orders 
I mean the creative (Shakspere, Homer, Dante), and Reflective or 
Perceptive (Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson). But both of these must 



60 MODERN PAINTERS 

Thus, when Dante describes the spirits falling from 
the bank of Acheron "as dead leaves flutter from a 
bough," ^ he gives the most perfect image possible of 
their utter lightness, feebleness, passiveness, and scat- 
tering agony of despair, without, however, for an 
instant losing his own clear perception that these are 
souls, and those are leaves ; he makes no confusion of 
one with the other. But when Coleridge speaks of 

The one red leaf, the last of its clan, 
That dances as often as dance it can,^ 

he has a morbid, that is to say, a so far false, idea about 
the leaf; he fancies a life in it, and will, which there are 
not; confuses its powerlessness with choice, its fading 
death with merriment, and the wind that shakes it with 

be frst-TSite in their range, though their range is different; and with 
poetry second-rate in quality no one ought to l)e allowed to trouble 
mankind. There is quite enough of the best, — much more than we 
can ever read or enjoy in the length of a life ; and it is a literal wrong 
or sin in any person to encumber us with inferior work. I have no 
patience with apologies made by young pseudo-poets, "that they 
believe there is some good in what they have written : that they hope to 
do better in time," etc. Some good ! If there is not all good, there is 
no good. If they ever hope to do better, why do they trouble us now ? 
Let them rather courageously burn all they have done, and wait for 
the better days. There are few men, ordinarily educated, who in 
moments of strong feeling could not strike out a poetical thought, and 
afterwards polish it so as to be presentable. But men of sense know 
better than so to waste their time; and those who sincerely love 
poetry, know the touch of the master's hand on the chords too well to 
fumble among them after him. Nay, more than this, all inferior 
poetry is an injury to the good, inasmuch as it takes away the fresh- 
ness of rhymes, blunders upon and gives a wretched commonalty to 
good thoughts ; and, in general, adds to the weight of human weari- 
ness in a most woful and culpable manner. There are few thoughts 
likely to come across ordinary men, which have not already been 
expressed by greater men in the best possible way; and it is a wiser, 
more generous, more noble thing to remember and point out the 
perfect words, than to invent poorer ones, wherewith to encumber 
temporarily the world. [Ruskin.] 

' Inferno, 3. 112. 

2 Christabel, 1. 49-50. 



OF THE PATHETIC FALLACY 61 

music. Here, however, there is some beauty, even in 
the morbid passage; but take an instance in Homer 
and Pope. Without the knowledge of Ulysses, Elpenor, 
his youngest follower, has fallen from an upper cham- 
ber in the Circean palace, and has been left dead, un- 
missed by his leader or companions, in the haste of 
their departure. They cross the sea to the Cimmerian 
land ; and Ulysses summons the shades from Tartarus. 
The first which appears is that of the lost Elpenor. 
Ulysses, amazed, and in exactly the spirit of bitter and 
terrified lightness which is seen in Hamlet,^ addresses 
the spirit with the simple, startled words : — 

"Elpenor ! How earnest thou under the shadowy darkness ? 
Hast thou come faster on foot than I in my black ship.?" ^ 

Which Pope renders thus : — 

O, say, what angry power Elpenor led 
To glide in shades, and wander with the dead ? 
How could thy soul, by realms and seas disjoined, 
Outfly the nimble sail, and leave the lagging wind ? 

1 sincerely hope the reader finds no pleasure here, 
either in the nimbleness of the sail, or the laziness of the 
wind ! And yet how is it that these conceits are so pain- 
ful now, when they have been pleasant to us in the other 
instances ? 

For a very simple reason. They are not a apathetic 
fallacy at all, for they are put into the mouth of the 
wrong passion — a passion which never could possibly 
have spoken them — agonized curiosity. Ulysses wants 
to know the facts of the matter ; and the very last thing 
his mind could do at the moment would be to pause, or 

* " Well said, old mole! can'st work i' the ground so fast?" — 
[Ruskin.] 

2 Odyssey, 11. 57-58. 



62 MODERN PAINTERS 

suggest in anywise what was not a fact. The delay in the 
first three lines, and conceit in the last, jar upon us 
instantly like the most frightful discord in music. No 
poet of true imaginative power could possibly have 
written the passage.^ 

Therefore we see that the spirit of truth must guide 
us in some sort, even in our enjoyment of fallacy. Cole- 
ridge's fallacy has no discord in it, but Pope's has 
set our teeth on edge. Without farther questioning, I 
will endeavour to state the main bearings of this mat- 
ter. 

The temperament which admits the pathetic fallacy, 
is, as I said above, that of a mind and body in some sort 
too weak to deal fully with what is before them or upon 
them ; borne away, or over-clouded, or over-dazzled by 
emotion ; and it is a more or less noble state, according 
to the force of the emotion which has induced it. For it 
is no credit to a man that he is not morbid or inaccurate 
in his perceptions, when he has no strength of feeling to 
warp them ; and it is in general a sign of higher capacity 
and stand in the ranks of being, that the emotions 
should be strong enough to vanquish, partly, the intel- 
lect, and make it beheve what they choose. But it is 
still a grander condition when the intellect also rises, 
till it is strong enough to assert its rule against, or 

^ It is worth while comparing the way a similar question is put 
by the exquisite sincerity of Keats : — 

He wept, and his bright tears 
Went trickling down the golden bow he held. 
Thus, with half-shut, suffused eyes, he stood; 
While from beneath some cumbrous boughs hard by 
With solemn step an awful goddess came. 
And there was purport in her looks for him, 
Which he with eager guess began to read 
Perplex'd, the while melodiously he said, 
''How cam\H thou over the nn footed sea P" 

Hyperion, 3. 42. — [Ruskin.] 



OF THE PATHETIC FALLACY 63 

together with, the utmost efforts of the passions ; and 
the whole man stands in an iron glow, white hot, per- 
haps, but still strong, and in no wise evaporating; even 
if he melts, losing none of his weight. 

So, then, we have the three ranks : the man who per- 
ceives rightly, because he does not feel, and to whom 
the primrose is very accurately the primrose,^ because 
he does not love it. Then, secondly, the man who per- 
ceives wrongly, because he feels, and to whom the prim- 
rose is anything else than a primrose : a star, or a sun, 
or a fairy's shield, or a forsaken maiden. And then, 
lastly, there is the man who perceives rightly in spite of 
his feelings, and to whom the primrose is for ever no- 
thing else than itself — a little flower apprehended in 
the very plain and leafy fact of it, whatever and how 
many soever the associations and passions may be that 
crowd around it. And, in general, these three classes 
may be rated in comparative order, as the men who are 
not poets at all, and the poets of the second order, and 
the poets of the first ; only however great a man may be, 
there are always some subjects which ought to throw 
him off his balance; some, by which his poor human 
capacity of thought should be conquered, and brought 
into the inaccurate and vague state of perception, so 
that the language of the highest inspiration becomes 
broken, obscure, and wild in metaphor, resembling that 
of the weaker man, overborne by weaker things. 

And thus, in full, there are four classes : the men who 
feel nothing, and therefore see truly; the men who feel 
strongly, think weakly, and see untruly (second order 

1 See Wordsworth's Peter Bell, Part 1 : — 

A primrose by a river's brim 
A yellow primrose was to him, 
And it was nothing more. 



64 MODERN PAINTERS 

of poets) ; the men who feel strongly, think strongly, and 
see truly (first order of poets) ; and the men who, strong 
as human creatures can be, are yet submitted to influ- 
ences stronger than they, and see in a sort untruly, 
because what they see is inconceivably above them. 
This last is the usual condition of prophetic inspiration. 

I separate these classes, in order that their charac- 
ter may be clearly understood ; but of course they are 
united each to the other by imperceptible transitions, 
and the same mind, according to the influences to 
which it is subjected, passes at different times into the 
various states. Still, the difference between the great 
and less man is, on the whole, chiefly in this point of 
alterahility . That is to say, the one knows too much, 
and perceives and feels too much of the past and future, 
and of all things beside and around that which imme- 
diately affects him, to be in any wise shaken by it. His 
mind is made up; his thoughts have an accustomed 
current ; his ways are stedfast ; it is not this or that new 
sight which will at once unbalance him. He is tender 
to impression at the surface, like a rock with deep moss 
upon it; but there is too much mass of him to be 
moved. The smaller man, with the same degree of sen- 
sibility, is at once carried off his feet ; he wants to do 
something he did not want to do before ; he views all the 
universe in a new light through his tears ; he is gay 
or enthusiastic, melancholy or passionate, as things 
come and go to him. Therefore the high creative poet 
might even be thought, to a great extent, impassive (as 
shallow people think Dante stern), receiving indeed all 
feelings to the full, but having a great centre of reflec- 
tion and knowledge in which he stands serene, and 
watches the feeling, as it were, from far off. 

Dante, in his most intense moods, has entire com- 



OF THE PATHETIC FALLACY 65 

mand of himself, and can look around calmly, at all 
moments, for the image or the word that will best tell 
what he sees to the upper or lower world. But Keats 
and Tennyson, and the poets of the second order, are 
generally themselves subdued by the feelings under 
which they write, or, at least, write as choosing to be 
so ; and therefore admit certain expressions and modes 
of thought which are in some sort diseased or false. 

Now so long as we see that the feeling is true, we par- 
don, or are even pleased by, the confessed fallacy of 
sight which it induces: we are pleased, for instance, 
with those lines of Kingsley's above quoted, not be- 
cause they fallaciously describe foam, but because they 
faithfully describe sorrow. But the moment the mind 
of the speaker becomes cold, that moment every such 
expression becomes untrue, as being for ever untrue in 
the external facts. And there is no greater baseness in 
literature than the habit of using these metaphorical 
expressions in cool blood. An inspired writer, in full 
impetuosity of passion, may speak wisely and truly 
of "raging waves of the sea foaming out their own 
shame " ; ^ but it is only the basest writer who cannot 
speak of the sea without talking of "raging waves," 
"remorseless floods," "ravenous billows," etc.; and it 
is one of the signs of the highest power in a writer to 
check all such, habits of thought, and to keep his eyes 
fixed firmly on the pure fact, out of which if any feeling 
comes to him or his reader, he knows it must be a true 
one. 

To keep to the waves, I forget who it is who repre- 
sents a man in despair desiring that his body may be 
cast into the sea, 

Whose changing mound, and foam that passed aicay. 
Might mock the eye that questioned where I lay. 
» Jude 13. 



66 MODERN PAINTERS 

Observe, there is not a single false, or even over- 
charged, expression. " Mound " of the sea wave is per- 
fectly simple and true; "changing" is as familiar as 
may be; "foam that passed away," strictly literal; and 
the whole line descriptive of the reality with a degree 
of accuracy which I know not any other verse, in the 
range of poetry, that altogether equals. For most 
people have not a distinct idea of the clumsiness and 
massiveness of a large wave. The word " wave " is used 
too generally of ripples and breakers, and bendings in 
light drapery or grass : it does not by itself convey a per- 
fect image. But the word "mound" is heavy, large, 
dark, definite; there is no mistaking the kind of wave 
meant, nor missing the sight of it. Then the term 
"changing" has a peculiar force also. Most people 
think of waves as rising and falling. But if they look at 
the sea carefully, they will perceive that the waves do 
not rise and fall. They change. Change both place 
and form, but they do not fall ; one wave goes on, and 
on, and still on ; now lower, now higher, now tossing 
its mane like a horse, now building itself together like a 
wall, now shaking, now steady, but still the same wave, 
till at last it seems struck by something, and changes, 
one knows not how, — becomes another wave. 

The close of the line insists on this image, and paints 
it still more perfectly, — "foam that passed away." 
Not merely melting, disappearing, but passing on, out 
of sight, on the career of the wave. Then, having put 
the absolute ocean fact as far as he may before our eyes, 
the poet leaves us to feel about it as we may, and to 
trace for ourselves the opposite fact, — the image of the 
green mounds that do not change, and the white and 
written stones that do not pass away; and thence to 
follow out also the associated images of the calm life 



OF THE PATHETIC FALLACY 67 

with the quiet grave, and the despairing life with the 
fading foam — 

Let no man move his bones. 
As for Samaria, her king is cut off like the foam upon the 
water. ^ 

But nothing of this is actually told or pointed out, and 
the expressions, as they stand, are perfectly severe and 
accurate, utterly uninfluenced by the firmly governed 
emotion of the writer. Even the word " mock " is hardly 
an exception, as it may stand merely for " deceive" or 
"defeat," without implying any impersonation of the 
waves. 

It may be well, perhaps, to give one or two more 
instances to show the peculiar dignity possessed by all 
passages, which thus limit their expression to the pure 
fact, and leave the hearer to gather what he can from it. 
Here is a notable one from the Iliad. Helen, looking 
from the Scsean gate of Troy over the Grecian host, 
and telling Priam the names of its captains, says at 
last : — 

"I see all the other dark-eyed Greeks; but two I cannot 
see, — Castor and Pollux, — whom one mother bore with me. 
Have they not followed from fair Lacedaemon, or have they 
indeed come in their sea-wandering ships, but now will not 
enter into the battle of men, fearing the shame and the scorn 
that is in Me.?" 

Then Homer : — 

"So she spoke. But them, already, the life-giving earth 
possessed, there in Lacedsemon, in the dear fatherland." ^ 

^ 2 Kings xxiii, 18, and Hosea x, 7. 

2 Iliad, 3. 243. 

In the MS. Ruskin notes, " The insurpassably tender irony in 
the epithet — 'life-giving earth' — of the grave"; and then adds 
another ilhistration : — " Compare the hammer-stroke at the close of 
the [32d] chapter of Vanity Fair — ' The darkness came down on the 



68 MODERN PAINTERS 

Note, here, the high poetical truth carried to the 
extreme. The poet has to speak of the earth in sadness, 
but he will not let that sadness affect or change his 
thoughts of it. No ; though Castor and Pollux be dead, 
yet the earth is our mother still, fruitful, life-giving. 
These are the facts of the thing. I see nothing else than 
these. Make what you will of them. 

Take another very notable instance from Casimir de 
la Vigne's terrible ballad, " La Toilette de Constance." 
I must quote a few lines out of it here and there, to 
enable the reader who has not the book by him, to 
understand its close. 

" Vite, Anna ! vite ; au miroir ! 

Plus vite, Anna. L'heure s'avance, 
Et je vais au bal ce soir 

Chez I'ambassadeur de France. 

" Y pensez-vous ? ils sont fanes, ces noeuds ; 

lis sont d'hier; mon Dieu, comme tout passe! 
Que du reseau qui retient mes cheveux 

Les glands d'azur retombent avec grace. 
Plus haut ! Plus bas ! Vous ne comprenez rien ! 

Que sur mon front ce saphir etincelle : 
Vous me piquez, maladroite. Ah, c'est bien, 

Bien, — chere Anna! Je t'aime, je suis belle. 

"Celui qu'en vain je voudrais oublier . . . 
(Anna, ma robe) il y sera, j'espere. 
(Ah, fi ! profane, est-ce la mon collier ? 
Quoi! ces grains d'or benits par le Saint-Pere!) 

field and city, and Amelia was praying for George, who was lying on 
his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart.' A great deal might 
have been said about it. The writer is very sorry for Amelia, neither 
does he want faith in prayer. He knows as well as any of us that 
prayer must be answered in some sort ; but those are the facts. The 
man and woman sixteen miles apart — one on her knees on the floor, 
the other on his face in the clay. So much love in her heart, so much 
lead in his. Make what you can of it." [Cook and Wedderburn.] 



OF THE PATHETIC FALLACY 69 

II y sera; Dieu, s'il pressait ma main, 

En y pensant a peine je respire : 
Frere Anselmo doit m'entendre demain, 

Comment ferai-je, Anna, pour tout lui dire ? . . . 

" Vite ! un coup d'oeil au miroir, 

Le dernier. J'ai I'assurance 

Qu'on va m'adorer ce soir 

Chez I'ambassadeur de France." 

Pres du foyer, Constance s'admirait. 

Dieu! sur sa robe il vole une etincelle! 
Au feu! Courez! Quand I'espoir I'enivrait, 

Tout perdre ainsi ! Quoi ! Mourir, — et si belle ! 
L'horrible feu ronge avec volupte 

Ses bras, son sein, et I'entoure, et s'eleve, 
Et sans pitie devore sa beaute, 

Ses dix-huit ans, helas, et son doux reve! 

Adieu, bal, plaisir, amour! 

On disait, Pauvre Constance! 
Et Ton dansa, jusqu'au jour, 

Chez I'ambassadeur de France.^ 

The poem may be crudely paraphrased as follows : — 

"Quick, Anna, quick! to the mirror! It is late. 
And I'm to dance at the ambassador's . . . 
I'm going to the ball . . . 

"They're faded, see. 
These ribbons — they belong to yesterday. 
Heavens, how all things pass! Now gracefully hang 
The blue tassels from the net that holds my hair. 

" Higher! — no, lower! —you get nothing right! . . . 
Now let this sapphire sparkle on my brow. 
You're pricking me, you careless thing! That's good! 
I love you, Anna dear. How fair I am. . . . 

"I hope he'll be there, too — the one I've tried 
To forget! no use! (Anna, my gown!) he too . . . 
(O fie, you wicked girl ! my necklace, this ? 
These golden beads the Holy Father blessed ?) 



70 MODERN PAINTERS 

Yes, that is the fact of it. Right or wrong, the poet 
does not say. What you may think about it, he does not 
know. He has nothing to do with that. There lie the 
ashes of the dead girl in her chamber. There they 
danced, till the morning, at the Ambassador's of 
France. Make what you will of it. 

If the reader will look through the ballad, of which I 
have quoted only about the third part, he will find that 
there is not, from beginning to end of it, a single poeti- 
cal (so called) expression, except in one stanza. The 
girl speaks as simple prose as may be; there is not a 
word she would not have actually used as she was dress- 
ing. The poet stands by, impassive as a statue, record- 
ing her words just as they come. At last the doom 
seizes her, and in the very presence of death, for an 
instant, his own emotions conquer him. He records no 
longer the facts only, but the facts as they seem to him. 
The fire gnaws with voluptuousness — without pity. It 
is soon past. The fate is fixed for ever; and he retires 



He'll be there — Heavens! suppose he takes my hand — 

I scarce can draw my breath for thinking of it! 

And I confess to Father Anselmo 

To-morrow — how can I ever tell him all ? . . . 

One last glance at the mirror. O, I'm sure 

That they '11 adore me at the ball to-night." 

Before the fire she stands admiringly. 

O God ! a spark has leapt into her gown. 

Fire, fire ! — O run ! — Lost thus when mad with hope ? 

What, die ? and she so fair .? The hideous flames 

Rage greedily about her arms and breast. 

Envelop her, and leaping ever higher, 

Swallow up all her beauty, pitiless — 

Her eighteen years, alas ! and her sweet dream. 

Adieu to ball, to pleasure, and to love! 
"Poor Constance!" said the dancers at the ball, 
"Poor Constance!" — and they danced till break of day. 



OF THE PATHETIC FALLACY 71 

into his pale and crystalline atmosphere of truth. He 
closes all with the calm veracity, 

They said, "Poor Constance!" 

Now in this there is the exact type of the consum- 
mate poetical temperament. For, be it clearly and con- 
stantly remembered, that the greatness of a poet de- 
pends upon the two faculties, acuteness of feeling, and 
command of it. A poet is great, first in proportion to 
the strength of his passion, and then, that strength 
being granted, in proportion to his government of it; 
there being, however, always a point beyond which it 
would be inhuman and monstrous if he pushed this 
government, and, therefore, a point at which all fever- 
ish and wild fancy becomes just and true. Thus the 
destruction of the kingdom of Assyria cannot be con- 
templated firmly by a prophet of Israel. The fact is too 
great, too wonderful. It overthrows him, dashes him 
into a confused element of dreams. All the world is, to 
his stunned thought, full of strange voices. "Yea, the 
fir-trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, say- 
ing, ' Since thou art gone down to the grave, no feller is 
come up against us.' " ^ So, still more, the thought of 
the presence of Deity cannot be borne without this great 
astonishment. "The mountains and the hills shall 
break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of 
the field shall clap their hands." ^ 

But by how much this feeling is noble when it is jus- 
tified by the strength of its cause, by so much it is 
ignoble when there is not cause enough for it; and 
beyond all other ignobleness is the mere affectation of 
it, in hardness of heart. Simply bad writing may almost 
always, as above noticed, be known by its adoption of 
^ Isaiah xiv, 8. 2 Isaiah Iv, 12. 



72 MODERN PAINTERS 

these fanciful metaphorical expressions as a sort of cur- 
rent coin; yet there is even a worse, at least a more 
harmful condition of writing than this, in which such 
expressions are not ignorantly and feelinglessly caught 
up, but, by some master, skilful in handling, yet insin- 
cere, deliberately wrought out with chill and studied 
fancy ; as if we should try to make an old lava-stream 
look red-hot again, by covering it with dead leaves, or 
white-hot, with hoar-frost. 

When Young is lost in veneration, as he dwells on 
the character of a truly good and holy man, he permits 
himself for a moment to be overborne by the feeling so 
far as to exclaim — 

Where shall I find him ? angels, tell me where. 
You know him; he is near you; point him out. 
Shall I see glories beaming from his brow. 
Or trace his footsteps by the rising flowers ? ^ 

This emotion has a worthy cause, and is thus true 
and right. But now hear the cold-hearted Pope say to a 
shepherd girl — 

Where'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade; 
Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade; 
Your praise the birds shall chant in every grove. 
And winds shall waft it to the powers above. 
But would you sing, and rival Orpheus' strain, 
The wondering forests soon should dance again; 
The moving mountains hear the powerful call. 
And headlong streams hang, listening, in their fall.^ 

This is not, nor could it for a moment be mistaken 
for, the language of passion. It is simple falsehood, 
uttered by hypocrisy; definite absurdity, rooted in 

1 Night Thoughts, 2. 345. 

^ Pastorals : Summer, or Alexis, 73 ff ., with the omission of two 
couplets after the first. 



OF THE PATHETIC FALLACY 73 

affectation, and coldly asserted in the teeth of nature 
and fact. Passion will indeed go far in deceiving itself; 
but it must be a strong passion, not the simple wish of a 
lover to tempt his mistress to sing. Compare a very 
closely parallel passage in Wordsworth, in which the 
lover has lost his mistress : — 

Three years had Barbara in her grave been laid, 
When thus his moan he made : — 

**Oh, move, thou cottage, from behind yon oak, 

Or let the ancient tree uprooted lie. 
That in some other way yon smoke 

May mount into the sky. 
If still behind yon pine-tree's ragged bough. 

Headlong, the waterfall must come. 

Oh, let it, then, be dumb — 
Be anything, sweet stream, but that which thou art now." * 

Here is a cottage to be moved, if not a mountain, and 
a water-fall to be silent, if it is not to hang listening : but 
with what different relation to the mind that contem- 
plates them ! Here, in the extremity of its agony, the 
soul cries out wildly for relief, which at the same mo- 
ment it partly knows to be impossible, but partly 
believes possible, in a vague impression that a mira- 
cle might be wrought to give relief even to a less sore 
distress, — that nature is kind, and God is kind, and 
that grief is strong; it knows not well what is possi- 
ble to such grief. To silence a stream, to move a cot- 
tage wall, — one might think it could do as much as 
that! 

I believe these instances are enough to illustrate the 
main point I insist upon respecting the pathetic fallacy, 

^ From the poem beginning T is said that some have died for love, 
Ruskin evidently quoted from memory, for there are several verbal 
slips in the passage quoted. 



74 MODERN PAINTERS 

— that so far as it is a fallacy, it is always the sign of a 
morbid state of mind, and comparatively of a weak one. 
Even in the most inspired prophet it is a sign of the 
incapacity of his human sight or thought to bear what 
has been revealed to it. In ordinary poetry, if it is found 
in the thoughts of the poet himself, it is at once a sign 
of his belonging to the inferior school ; if in the thoughts 
of the characters imagined by him, it is right or wrong 
according to the genuineness of the emotion from 
which it springs ; always, however, implying necessarily 
some degree of weakness in the character. 

Take two most exquisite instances from master 
hands. The Jessy of Shenstone, and the Ellen of 
Wordsworth, have both been betrayed and deserted. 
Jessy, in the course of her most touching complaint, 
says : — 

If through the garden's flowery tribes I stray, 

Where bloom the jasmines that could once allure, 
" Hope not to find delight in us," they say, 
" For we are spotless, Jessy; we are pure. 



»> 1 



Compare with this some of the words of Ellen : — 

"Ah, why," said Ellen, sighing to herself, 
"Why do not words, and kiss, and solemn pledge, 
And nature, that is kind in woman's breast. 
And reason, that in man is wise and good. 
And fear of Him who is a righteous Judge, — 
Why do not these prevail for human life. 
To keep two hearts together, that began 
Their springtime with one love, and that have need 
Of mutual pity and forgiveness sweet 
To grant, or be received ; while that poor bird — 
O, come and hear him ! Thou who hast to me 
Been faithless, hear him ; — ' though a lowly creature, 

^ Stanza 16, of Shenstone's twenty-sixth Elegy. 



OF THE PATHETIC FALLACY 75 

One of God's simple children that yet know not 
The Universal Parent, how he sings! 
As if he wished the firmament of heaven 
Should listen, and give back to him the voice 
Of his triumphant constancy and love; 
The proclamation that he makes, how far 
His darkness doth transcend our fickle light." ^ 

The perfection of both these passages, as far as regards 
truth and tenderness of imagination in the two poets, 
is quite insuperable. But of the two characters imag- 
ined, Jessy is weaker than Ellen, exactly in so far as 
something appears to her to be in nature which is not. 
The flowers do not really reproach her. God meant 
them to comfort her, not to taunt her ; they would do so 
if she saw them rightly. 

Ellen, on the other hand, is quite above the slightest 
erring emotion. There is not the barest film of fallacy 
in all her thoughts. She reasons as calmly as if she did 
not feel. And, although the singing of the bird suggests 
to her the idea of its desiring to be heard in heaven, she 
does not for an instant admit any veracity in the 
thought. "As if," she says, — "I know he means no- 
thing of the kind ; but it does verily seem as if." The 
reader will find, by examining the rest of the poem, that 
Ellen's character is throughout consistent in this clear 
though passionate strength.^ 

^ The Excursion, 6. 869 ff . 

2 I cannot quit this subject without giving two more instances, 
both exquisite, of the pathetic fallacy, which I have just come upon, 
in Maud : — 

For a great speculation had fail'd ; 

And ever he mutter'd and madden'd, and ever wann'd with despair; 
And out he walk'd, when the wind like a broken worldling wail'd. 

And the flying gold of the ruind woodlands drove thro' the air. 

There has fallen a splendid tear 
From the passion-flower at the gate. 



76 MODERN PAINTERS 

It then being, I hope, now made clear to the reader in 
all respects that the pathetic fallacy is powerful only so 
far as it is pathetic, feeble so far as it is fallacious, and, 
therefore, that the dominion of Truth is entire, over 
this, as over every other natural and just state of the 
human mind, we may go on to the subject for the deal- 
ing with which this prefatory inquiry became neces- 
sary; and why necessary, \v^e shall see forthwith. 



OF CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE 
Volume III, Chaptek 13 

My reason for asking the reader to give so much of 
his time to the examination of the pathetic fallacy was, 
that, whether in literature or in art, he will find it 
eminently characteristic of the modern mind; and in 
the landscape, whether of literature or art, he will also 
find the modern painter endeavouring to express some- 
thing which he, as a living creature, imagines in the life- 
less object, while the classical and mediaeval painters 
were content with expressing the unimaginary and 
actual qualities of the object itself. It will be observed 
that, according to the principle stated long ago, I use 
the words painter and poet quite indifferently, includ- 
ing in our inquiry the landscape of literature, as well as 
that of painting ; and this the more because the spirit of 
classical landscape has hardly been expressed in any 
other way than by words. 

Taking, therefore, this wide field, it is surely a very 

The red rose cries, " She is near, she is near I " 
And the white rose weeps, " She is late." 

The larkspur listens, " / hear, I hear!" 
And the lily whispers, " / wait. " [Ruskin.] 



OF CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE 77 

notable circumstance, to begin with, that this pathetic 
fallacy is eminently characteristic of modern painting. 
For instance, Keats, describing a wave breaking out 
at sea, says of it : — 

Down whose green back the short-lived foam, all hoar, 
Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence/ 

That is quite perfect, as an example of the modern 
manner. The idea of the peculiar action with which 
foam rolls down a long, large wave could not have been 
given by any other words so well as by this " wayward 
indolence." But Homer would never have written, 
never thought of, such words. He could not by any pos- 
sibility have lost sight of the great fact that the wave, 
from the beginning to the end of it, do what it might, 
was still nothing else than salt water; and that salt 
water could not be either wayward or indolent. He will 
call the waves "over-roofed," "full-charged," "mon- 
strous," "compact-black," "dark-clear," "violet-col- 
oured," "wine-coloured," and so on. But every one of 
these epithets is descriptive of pure physical nature. 
" Over-roofed " is the term he invariably uses of any- 
thing — rock, house, or wave — that nods over at the 
brow ; the other terms need no explanation ; they are as 
accurate and intense in truth as words can be, but they 
never show the slightest feeling of anything animated 
in the ocean. Black or clear, monstrous or violet- 
coloured, cold salt water it is always, and nothing but 
that. 

" Well, but the modern writer, by his admission of the 
tinge of fallacy, has given an idea of something in the 
action of the wave which Homer could not, and surely, 
therefore, has made a step in advance ? Also there ap- 

^ Endymion, 2. 349-350. 



78 MODERN PAINTERS 

pears to be a degree of sympathy and feeling in the one 
writer, which there is not in the other; and as it has 
been received for a first principle that writers are great 
in proportion to the intensity of their feelings, and 
Homer seems to have no feelings about the sea but that 
it is black and deep, surely in this respect also the 
modern writer is the greater?" 

Stay a moment. Homer had some feeling about the 
sea ; a faith in the animation of it much stronger than 
Keats's. But all this sense of something living in it, he 
separates in his mind into a great abstract image of a 
Sea Power. He never says the waves rage, or the waves 
are idle. But he says there is somewhat in, and greater 
than, the waves, which rages, and is idle, and that he 
calls a god. 

I do not think we ever enough endeavour to enter 
into what a Greek's real notion of a god was. We are 
so accustomed to the modern mockeries of the classical 
religion, so accustomed to hear and see the Greek gods 
introduced as living personages, or invoked for help, by 
men who believe neither in them nor in any other gods, 
that we seem to have infected the Greek ages them- 
selves with the breath, and dimmed them with the 
shade, of our hypocrisy; and are apt to think that 
Homer, as we know that Pope, was merely an ingenious 
fabulist ; nay, more than this, that all the nations of past 
time were ingenious fabulists also, to whom the uni- 
verse was a lyrical drama, and by whom whatsoever 
was said about it was merely a witty allegory, or a grace- 
ful lie, of which the entire upshot and consummation 
was a pretty statue in the middle of the court, or at the 
end of the garden. 

This, at least, is one of our forms of opinion about 
Greek faith ; not, indeed, possible altogether to any man 



OF CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE 79 

of honesty or ordinary powers of thought ; but still so 
venomously inherent in the modern philosophy that all 
the pure lightning of Carlyle cannot as yet quite burn it 
out of any of us. And then, side by side with this mere 
infidel folly, stands the bitter short-sightedness of Puri- 
tanism, holding the classical god to be either simply an 
idol, — a block of stone ignorantly, though sincerely, 
worshipped — or else an actual diabolic or betraying 
power, usurping the place of God. 

Both these Puritanical estimates of Greek deity are 
of course to some extent true. The corruption of classi- 
cal worship is barren idolatry ; and that corruption was 
deepened, and variously directed to their own pur- 
poses, by the evil angels. But this was neither the 
whole, nor the principal part, of Pagan worship. 
Pallas was not, in the pure Greek mind, merely a 
powerful piece of ivory in a temple at Athens ; neither 
was the choice of Leonidas between the alternatives 
granted him by the oracle, of personal death, or ruin 
to his country, altogether a work of the Devil's prompt- 
ing. 

What, then, was actually the Greek god "^ In what 
way were these two ideas of human form, and divine 
power, credibly associated in the ancient heart, so as 
to become a subject of true faith irrespective equally 
of fable, allegory, superstitious trust in stone, and 
demoniacal influence.^ 

It seems to me that the Greek had exactly the same 
instinctive feeling about the elements that we have 
ourselves; that to Homer, as much as to Casimir de la 
Vigne,^ fire seemed ravenous and pitiless ; to Homer, as 
much as to Keats, the sea-wave appeared wayward or 
idle, or whatever else it may be to the poetical passion. 
1 See p. 68. 



80 MODERN PAINTERS 

But then the Greek reasoned upon this sensation, say- 
ing to himself : " I can Hght the fire, and put it out ; I 
can dry this water up, or drink it. It cannot be the fire 
or the water that rages, or that is wayward. But it must 
be something in this fire and in the water, which I can- 
not destroy by extinguishing the one, or evaporating 
the other, any more than I destroy myself by cutting off 
my finger; / was in my finger, — something of me at 
least was; I had a power over it and felt pain in it, 
though I am still as much myself when it is gone. So 
there may be a power in the water which is not water, 
but to which the water is as a body ; — which can strike 
with it, move in it, suffer in it, yet not be destroyed with 
it. This something, this Great Water Spirit, I must not 
confuse with the waves, which are only its body. They 
may flow hither and thither, increase or diminish. 
That must be invisible — imperishable — a god. So of 
fire also ; those rays which I can stop, and in the midst 
of which I cast a shadow, cannot be divine, nor greater 
than I. They cannot feel, but there may be something 
in them that feels, — a glorious intelligence, as much 
nobler and more swift than mine, as these rays, which 
are its body, are nobler and swifter than my flesh ; — 
the spirit of all light, and truth, and melody, and 
revolving hours." 

It was easy to conceive, farther, that such spirits 
should be able to assume at will a human form, in order 
to hold intercourse with men, or to perform any act for 
which their proper body, whether of fire, earth, or air, 
was unfitted. And it would have been to place them 
beneath, instead of above, humanity, if, assuming the 
form of man, they could not also have tasted his plea- 
sures. Hence the easy step to the more or less material 
ideas of deities, which are apt at first to shock us, but 



OF CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE 81 

which are indeed only dishonourable so far as they 
represent the gods as false and unholy. It is not the 
materialism, but the vice, which degrades the concep- 
tion ; for the materialism itself is never positive or com- 
plete. There is always some sense of exaltation in the 
spiritual and immortal body ; and of a power proceed- 
ing from the visible form through all the infinity of the 
element ruled by the particular god. The precise na- 
ture of the idea is well seen in the passage of the Iliad 
which describes the river Scamander defending the 
Trojans against Achilles.^ In order to remonstrate with 
the hero, the god assumes a human form, which never- 
theless is in some way or other instantly recognized by 
Achilles as that of the river-god : it is addressed at once 
as a river, not as a man ; and its voice is the voice of a* 
river "out of the deep whirlpools." ^ Achilles refuses 
to obey its commands; and from the human form it 
returns instantly into its natural or divine one, and 
endeavours to overwhelm him with waves. Vulcan 
defends Achilles, and sends fire against the river, which 
suffers in its water-body, till it is able to bear no more. 
At last even the "nerve of the river," or "strength of 
the river" (note the expression), feels the fire, and this 
"strength of the river" addresses Vulcan in supplica- 
tions for respite. There is in this precisely the idea of a 
vital part of the river-body, which acted and felt, and 
which, if the fire reached, it was death, just as would 
be the case if it touched a vital part of the human body. 
Throughout the passage the manner of conception is 
perfectly clear and consistent; and if, in other places, 

1 Iliad, 21. 212-360. 

2 Compare Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto i. stanza 15, and canto 
V. stanza 2. In the first instance, the river-spirit is accurately the 
Homeric god, only Homer would have believed in it, — Scott did not: 
at least not altogether. [Ruskin.] 



82 MODERN PAINTERS 

the exact connection between the ruling spirit and the 
thing ruled is not so manifest, it is only because it is 
almost impossible for the human mind to dwell long 
upon such subjects without falling into inconsistencies, 
and gradually slackening its effort to grasp the entire 
truth; until the more spiritual part of it slips from its 
hold, and only the human form of the god is left, to be 
conceived and described as subject to all the errors 
of humanity. But I do not believe that the idea ever 
weakens itself down to mere allegory. When Pallas is 
said to attack and strike down Mars, it does not mean 
merely that Wisdom at that moment prevailed against 
Wrath. It means that there are, indeed, two great 
spirits, one entrusted to guide the human soul to wis- 
dom and chastity, the other to kindle wrath and prompt 
to battle. It means that these two spirits, on the spot 
where, and at the moment when, a great contest was to 
be decided between all that they each governed in man, 
then and there (assumed) human form, and human 
weapons, and did verily and materially strike at each 
other, until the Spirit of Wrath was crushed. And 
when Diana is said to hunt with her nymphs in the 
woods, it does not mean merely, as Wordsworth puts 
it,^ that the poet or shepherd saw the moon and stars 
glancing between the branches of the trees, and wished 
to say so figuratively. It means that there is a living 
spirit, to which the light of the moon is a body; which 
takes delight in glancing between the clouds and fol- 
lowing the wild beasts as they wander through the 
night ; and that this spirit sometimes assumes a perfect 
human form, and in this form, with real arrows, pur- 
sues and slays the wild beasts, which with its mere 
arrows of moonlight it could not slay ; retaining, never- 
1 The Excursion, 4. 861-871. 



OF CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE 83 

theless, all the while, its power and being in the moon- 
light, and in all else that it rules. 

There is not the smallest inconsistency or unspiritu- 
ality in this conception. If there were, it would attach 
equally to the appearance of the angels to Jacob, Abra- 
ham, Joshua, or Manoah.^ In all those instances the 
highest authority which governs our own faith requires 
us to conceive divine power clothed with a human form 
(a form so real that it is recognized for superhuman 
only by its " doing wondrously "), and retaining, never- 
theless, sovereignty and omnipresence in all the world. 
This is precisely, as I understand it, the heathen idea of 
a God ; and it is impossible to comprehend any single 
part of the Greek mind until we grasp this faithfully, 
not endeavouring to explain it away in any wise, but 
accepting, with frank decision and definition, the 
tangible existence of its deities ; — blue-eyed — white- 
fleshed — human-hearted, — capable at their choice 
of meeting man absolutely in his own nature — feast- 
ing with him — talking with him — fighting with him, 
eye to eye, or breast to breast, as Mars with Diomed ; ^ 
or else, dealing with him in a more retired spirituality, 
as Apollo sending the plague upon the Greeks,^ when 
his quiver rattles at his shoulders as he moves, and yet 
the darts sent forth of it strike not as arrows, but as 
plague ; or, finally, retiring completely into the material 
universe which they properly inhabit, and dealing with 
man through that, as Scamander with Achilles, through 
his waves. 

Nor is there anything whatever in the various actions 
recorded of the gods, however apparently ignoble, to 

^ Genesis xxviii, 12; xxxii, 1; xxii, 11; Joshua v, 13 ff.; Judges 
xiii,3flF. 

2 Iliad, 5. 846. s Iliad, 1. 43. 



84 MODERN PAINTERS 

indicate weakness of belief in them. Very frequently 
things which appear to us ignoble are merely the sim- 
plicities of a pure and truthful age. When Juno beats 
Diana about the ears with her own quiver/ for instance, 
we start at first, as if Homer could not have believed 
that they were both real goddesses. But what should 
Juno have done ? Killed Diana with a look ? Nay, she 
neither wished to do so, nor could she have done so, 
by the very faith of Diana's goddess-ship. Diana is as 
immortal as herself. Frowned Diana into submission ? 
But Diana has come expressly to try conclusions with 
her, and will by no means be frowned into submission. 
Wounded her with a celestial lance ? That sounds more 
poetical, but it is in reality partly more savage and 
partly more absurd, than Homer. More savage, for it 
makes Juno more cruel, therefore less divine ; and more 
absurd, for it only seems elevated in tone, because we 
use the word "celestial," which means nothing. What 
sort of a thing is a " celestial " lance ? Not a wooden 
one. Of what then ? Of moonbeams, or clouds, or mist. 
Well, therefore, Diana's arrows were of mist too; and 
her quiver, and herself, and Juno, with her lance, and 
all, vanish into mist. Why not have said at once, if that 
is all you mean, that two mists met, and one drove the 
other back ? That would have been rational and intelli- 
gible, but not to talk of celestial lances. Homer had no 
such misty fancy ; he believed the two goddesses were 
there in true bodies, with true weapons, on the true 
earth; and still I ask, what should Juno have done.? 
Not beaten Diana .'^ No; for it is unlady-like. Un- 
English-lady-like, yes ; but by no means un-Greek-lady- 
like, nor even un-natural-lady-like. If a modern lady 
does not beat her servant or her rival about the ears, it 
1 Iliad, 21. 489 ff. 



OF CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE 85 

is oftener because she is too weak, or too proud, than 
because she is of purer mind than Homer's Juno. She 
will not strike them; but she will overwork the one or 
slander the other without pity; and Homer would not 
have thought that one whit more goddess-like than 
striking them with her open hand. 

If, however, the reader likes to suppose that while 
the two goddesses in personal presence thus fought 
with arrow and quiver, there was also a broader and 
vaster contest supposed by Homer between the ele- 
ments they ruled ; and that the goddess of the heavens, 
as she struck the goddess of the moon on the flush- 
ing cheek, was at the same instant exercising omnipre- 
sent power in the heavens themselves, and gathering 
clouds, with which, filled with the moon's own arrows 
or beams, she was encumbering and concealing the 
moon; he is welcome to this out carrying of the idea, 
provided that he does not pretend to make it an inter- 
pretation instead of a mere extension, nor think to 
explain away my real, running, beautiful beaten Diana, 
into a moon behind clouds.^ 

It is only farther to be noted, that the Greek concep- 
tion of Godhead, as it was much more real than we usu- 
ally suppose, so it was much more bold and familiar 
than to a modern mind would be possible. I shall have 
something more to observe, in a little while, of the dan- 
ger of our modern habit of endeavouring to raise our- 
selves to something like comprehension of the truth of 
divinity, instead of simply believing the words in which 

^ Compare the exquisite lines of Longfellow on the sunset in The 
Golden Legend : — 

The day is done; and slowly from the scene 

The stooping sun up-gathers his spent shafts, 

And puts them back into his golden quiver. [Ruskin.] 



86 MODERN PAINTERS 

the Deity reveals Himself to us. The Greek erred 
rather on the other side, making hardly any effort to 
conceive divine mind as above the human ; and no 
more shrinking from frank intercourse with a divine 
being, or dreading its immediate presence, than that of 
the simplest of mortals. Thus Atrides, enraged at his 
sword's breaking in his hand upon the helmet of Paris, 
after he had expressly invoked the assistance of Ju- 
piter, exclaims aloud, as he would to a king who had 
betrayed him, " Jove, Father, there is not another god 
more evil-minded than thou!" ^ and Helen, provoked 
at Paris's defeat, and oppressed with pouting shame 
both for him and for herself, when Venus appears at her 
side, and would lead her back to the delivered Paris, 
impatiently tells the goddess to "go and take care of 
Paris herself." ^ 

The modern mind is naturally, but vulgarly and 
unjustly, shocked by this kind of familiarity. Rightly 
understood, it is not so much a sign of misunderstand- 
ing of the divine nature as of good understanding of the 
human. The Greek lived, in all things, a healthy, and, 
in a certain degree, a perfect life. He had no morbid 
or sickly feeling of any kind. He was accustomed to 
face death without the slightest shrinking, to undergo 
all kinds of bodily hardship without complaint, and to 
do what he supposed right and honourable, in most 
cases, as a matter of course. Confident of his own 
immortality, and of the power of abstract justice, he 
expected to be dealt with in the next world as was right, 
and left the matter much in his god's hands ; but being 
thus immortal, and finding in his own soul something 
which it seemed quite as difficult to master, as to rule 
the elements, he did not feel that it was an appalling 
' Iliad, 3. 365. ^ Iliad, 3. 406 ff. 



OF CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE 87 

superiority in those gods to have bodies of water, or 
fire, instead of flesh, and to have various work to do 
among the clouds and waves, out of his human way; 
or sometimes, even in a sort of service to himself. Was 
not the nourishment of herbs and flowers a kind of 
ministering to his wants ; were not the gods in some sort 
his husbandmen, and spirit-servants? Their mere 
strength or omnipresence did not seem to him a dis- 
tinction absolutely terrific. It might be the nature of 
one being to be in two places at once, and of another to 
be only in one ; but that did not seem of itself to infer 
any absolute lordliness of one nature above the other, 
any more than an insect must be a nobler creature than 
a man, because it can see on four sides of its head, and 
the man only in front. They could kill him or torture 
him, it was true; but even that not unjustly, or not for 
ever. There was a fate, and a Divine Justice, greater 
than they; so that if they did wrong, and he right, 
he might fight it out with them, and have the better 
of them at last. In a general way, they were wiser, 
stronger, and better than he; and to ask counsel of 
them, to obey them, to sacrifice to them, to thank them 
for all good, this was well : but to be utterly downcast 
before them, or not to tell them his mind in plain Greek 
if they seemed to him to be conducting themselves in 
an ungodly manner — this would not be well. 

Such being their general idea of the gods, we can 
now easily understand the habitual tone of their feel- 
ings towards what was beautiful in nature. With us, 
observe, the idea of the Divinity is apt to get separated 
from the life of nature ; and imagining our God upon 
a cloudy throne, far above the earth, and not in the 
flowers or waters, we approach those visible things with 
a theory that they are dead ; governed by physical laws. 



88 MODERN PAINTERS 

and so forth. But coming to them, we find the theory 
fail ; that they are not dead ; that, say what we choose 
about them, the instinctive sense of their being aHve is 
too strong for us ; and in scorn of all physical law, the 
wilful fountain sings, and the kindly flowers rejoice. 
And then, puzzled, and yet happy; pleased, and yet 
ashamed of being so ; accepting sympathy from nature, 
which we do not believe it gives, and giving sympathy 
to nature, which we do not believe it receives, — mix- 
ing, besides, all manner of purposeful play and conceit 
with these involuntary fellowships, — we fall necessa- 
rily into the curious web of hesitating sentiment, pa- 
thetic fallacy, and wandering fancy, which form a great 
part of our modern view of nature. But the Greek 
never removed his god out of nature at all ; never at- 
tempted for a moment to contradict his instinctive sense 
that God was everywhere. " The tree is glad," said he, 
** I know it is ; I can cut it down : no matter, there was 
a nymph in it. The water does sing," said he ; "I can 
dry it up ; but no matter, there was a naiad in it." But 
in thus clearly defining his belief, observe, he threw it 
entirely into a human form, and gave his faith to no- 
thing but the image of his own humanity. What sym- 
pathy and fellowship he had, were always for the spirit 
in the stream, not for the stream ; always for the dryad 
in the wood, not for the wood. Content with this hu- 
man sympathy, he approached the actual waves and 
woody fibres with no sympathy at all. The spirit that 
ruled them, he received as a plain fact. Them, also, 
ruled and material, he received as plain facts; they, 
without their spirit, were dead enough. A rose was 
good for scent, and a stream for sound and coolness; 
for the rest, one was no more than leaves, the other no 
more than water ; he could not make anything else of 



OF CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE 89 

them; and the divine power, which was involved in 
their existence, having been all distilled away by him 
into an independent Flora or Thetis, the poor leaves or 
waves were left, in mere cold corporealness, to make 
the most of their being discernibly red and soft, clear 
and wet, and unacknowledged in any other power 
whatsoever. 

Then, observe farther, the Greeks lived in the midst 
of the most beautiful nature, and were as familiar with 
blue sea, clear air, and sweet outlines of mountain, as 
we are with brick walls, black smoke, and level fields. 
This perfect familiarity rendered all such scenes of nat- 
ural beauty unexciting, if not indifferent to them, by lull- 
ing and overwearying the imagination as far as it was 
concerned with such things ; but there was another kind 
of beauty which they found it required effort to obtain, 
and which, when thoroughly obtained, seemed more 
glorious than any of this wild loveliness — the beauty 
of the human countenance and form. This, they per- 
ceived, could only be reached by continual exercise of 
virtue ; and it was in Heaven's sight, and theirs, all the 
more beautiful because it needed this self-denial to 
obtain it. So they set themselves to reach this, and hav- 
ing gained it, gave it their principal thoughts, and set 
it off with beautiful dress as best they might. But mak- 
ing this their object, they were obliged to pass their 
lives in simple exercise and disciplined employments. 
Living wholesomely, giving themselves no fever fits, 
either by fasting or over-eating, constantly in the open 
air, and full of animal spirit and physical power, they 
became incapable of every morbid condition of mental 
emotion. Unhappy love, disappointed ambition, spir- 
itual despondency, or any other disturbing sensation, 
had little power over the well-braced nerves, and 



90 MODERN PAINTERS 

healthy flow of the blood ; and what bitterness might 
yet fasten on them was soon boxed or raced out of a boy, 
and spun or woven out of a girl, or danced out of both. 
They had indeed their sorrows, true and deep, but still, 
more like children's sorrows than ours, whether burst- 
ing into open cry of pain, or hid with shuddering under 
the veil, still passing over the soul as clouds do over 
heaven, not sullying it, not mingling with it; — darken- 
ing it perhaps long or utterly, but still not becoming 
one with it, and for the most part passing away in dash- 
ing rain of tears, and leaving the man unchanged ; in 
no wise affecting, as our sorrow does, the whole tone of 
his thought and imagination thenceforward. 

How far our melancholy may be deeper and wider 
than theirs in its roots and view, and therefore nobler, 
we shall consider presently ; but at all events, they had 
the advantage of us in being entirely free from all those 
dim and feverish sensations which result from un- 
healthy state of the body. I believe that a large amount 
of the dreamy and sentimental sadness, tendency to 
reverie, and general patheticalness of modern life re- 
sults merely from derangement of stomach; holding 
to the Greek life the same relation that the feverish 
night of an adult does to a child's sleep. 

Farther. The human beauty, which, whether in its 
bodily being or in imagined divinity, had become, for 
the reasons we have seen, the principal object of culture 
and sympathy to these Greeks, was, in its perfection, 
eminently orderly, symmetrical, and tender. Hence, 
contemplating it constantly in this state, they could not 
but feel a proportionate fear of all that was disorderly, 
unbalanced, and rugged. Having trained their stoutest 
soldiers into a strength so delicate and lovely, that 
their white flesh, with their blood upon it, should look 



OF CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE 91 

like ivory stained with purple;^ and having always 
aroiind them, in the motion and majesty of this beauty, 
enough for the full employment of their imagination, 
they shrank with dread or hatred from all the rugged- 
ness of lower nature, — from the wrinkled forest bark, 
the jagged hill-crest, and irregular, inorganic storm 
of sky; looking to these for the most part as adverse 
powers, and taking pleasure only in such portions of 
the lower world as were at once conducive to the rest 
and health of the human frame, and in harmony with 
the laws of its gentler beauty. 

Thus, as far as I recollect, without a single exception, 
every Homeric landscape, intended to be beautiful, is 
composed of a fountain, a meadow, and a shady grove. 
This ideal is very interestingly marked, as intended for 
a perfect one, in the fifth book of the Odyssey ; when 
Mercury himself stops for a moment, though on a mes- 
sage, to look at a landscape " which even an immortal 
might be gladdened to behold." ^ This landscape con- 
sists of a cave covered with a running vine, all blooming 
into grapes, and surrounded by a grove of alder, poplar, 
and sweet-smelling cypress. Four fountains of white 
(foaming) water, springing in succession (mark the 
orderhness), and close to one another, flow away in dif- 
ferent directions, through a meadow full of violets and 
parsley (parsley, to mark its moisture, being elsewhere 
called "marsh-nourished," and associated with the 
lotus ^) ; the air is perfumed not only by these violets, 
and by the sweet cypress, but by Calypso's fire of finely 
chopped cedar- wood, which sends a smoke, as of in- 
cense, through the island; Calypso herself is singing; 
and finally, upon the trees are resting, or roosting, owls, 

1 Iliad, 4. 141. [Ruskin.] ' Odyssey. 5. 63-74. 

3 Iliad, 2. 776. [Ruskin.] 



92 MODERN PAINTERS 

hawks, and "long-tongued sea-crows." Whether these 
last are considered as a part of the ideal landscape, as 
marine singing birds, I know not ; but the approval of 
Mercury appears to be elicited chiefly by the fountains 
and violet meadow. 

Now the notable things in this description are, first, 
the evident subservience of the whole landscape to hu- 
man comfort, to the foot, the taste, or the smell; and, 
secondly, that throughout the passage there is not a 
single figurative word expressive of the things being in 
any wise other than plain grass, fruit, or flower. I have 
used the term " spring " of the fountains, because, with- 
out doubt, Homer means that they sprang forth brightly, 
having their source at the foot of the rocks (as copious 
fountains nearly always have) ; but Homer does not say 
"spring," he says simply flow, and uses only one word 
for "growing softly," or "richly," of the tall trees, the 
vine, and the violets. There is, however, some expres- 
sion of sympathy with the sea-birds ; he speaks of them 
in precisely the same terms, as in other places of naval 
nations, saying they " have care of the works of the sea." 

If we glance through the references to pleasant land- 
scape which occur in other parts of the Odyssey, we 
shall always be struck by this quiet subjection of their 
every feature to human service, and by the excessive 
similarity in the scenes. Perhaps the spot intended, 
after this, to be most perfect, may be the garden of 
Alcinous, where the principal ideas are, still more 
definitely, order, symmetry, and fruitfulness ; ^ the beds 
being duly ranged between rows of vines, which, as well 
as the pear, apple, and fig trees, bear fruit continually, 
some grapes being yet sour, while others are getting 
black; there are plenty of ''orderly square beds of 
1 Odyssey, 7. 112-132. 



OF CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE 93 

herbs," chiefly leeks, and two fountains, one running 
through the garden, and one under the pavement of the 
palace to a reservoir for the citizens. Ulysses, pausing 
to contemplate this scene, is described nearly in the 
same terms as Mercury pausing to contemplate the 
wilder meadow ; and it is interesting to observe, that, in 
spite of all Homer's love of symmetry, the god's admi- 
ration is excited by the free fountains, wild violets, and 
wandering vine; but the mortal's, by the vines in rows, 
the leeks in beds, and the fountains in pipes. 

Ulysses has, however, one touching reason for loving 
vines in rows. His father had given him fifty rows for 
himself, when he was a boy, with corn between them 
(just as it now grows in Italy). Proving his identity 
afterwards to his father, whom he finds at work in his 
garden, "with thick gloves on, to keep his hands from 
the thorns," he reminds him of these fifty rows of vines, 
and of the "thirteen pear-trees and ten apple-trees" 
which he had given him : and Laertes faints upon his 
neck.^ 

If Ulysses had not been so much of a gardener, it 
might have been received as a sign of considerable 
feeling for landscape beauty, that, intending to pay 
the very highest possible compliment to the Princess 
Nausicaa (and having, indeed, the moment before 
gravely asked her whether she was a goddess or not), 
he says that he feels, at seeing her, exactly as he did 
when he saw the young palm tree growing at Apollo's 
shrine at Delos.^ But I think the taste for trim hedges 
and upright trunks has its usual influence over him here 
also, and that he merely means to tell the princess that 
she is delightfully tall and straight. 

The princess is, however, pleased by his address, and 
> Odyssey, 24. 334 ff. ^ Qdyssey, 6. 162. 



94 MODERN PAINTERS 

tells him to wait outside the town, till she can speak to 
her father about him. The spot to which she directs 
him is another ideal piece of landscape, composed of 
a " beautiful grove of aspen poplars, a fountain, and 
a meadow," ^ near the road-side : in fact, as nearly as 
possible such a scene as meets the eye of the traveller 
every instant on the much-despised lines of road 
through lowland France; for instance, on the railway 
between Arras and Amiens; — scenes, to my mind, 
quite exquisite in the various grouping and grace of 
their innumerable poplar avenues, casting sweet, trem- 
ulous shadows over their level meadows and labyrin- 
thine streams. We know that the princess means aspen 
poplars, because soon afterwards we find her fifty 
maid-servants at the palace, all spinning and in per- 
petual motion, compared to the "leaves of the tall 
poplar"; and it is with exquisite feeling that it is 
made afterwards^ the chief tree in the groves of Pro- 
serpine ; its light and quivering leafage having exactly 
the melancholy expression of fragility, faintness, and 
inconstancy which the ancients attributed to the dis- 
embodied spirit.^ The likeness to the poplars by the 
streams of Amiens is more marked still in the Iliads 
where the young Simois, struck by Ajax, falls to the 
earth "like an aspen that has grown in an irrigated 
meadow, smooth-trunked, the soft shoots springing 
from its top, which some coach-making man has cut 
down with his keen iron, that he may fit a wheel of it to 
a fair chariot, and it lies parching by the side of the 
stream." ^ It is sufficiently notable that Homer, living 
in mountainous and rocky countries, dwells thus de- 

1 Odyssey, 6. 291-292. 

2 Odyssey, 10. 510. [Ruskin.] 

■'' Compare the passage in Dante referred to above, p. 60. [Ruskin.] 
* Iliad, 4. 482-487. 



OF CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE 95 

lightedly on all the fiat bits ; and so I think invariably 
the inhabitants of mountain countries do, but the inhab- 
itants of the plains do not, in any similar way, dwell 
delightedly on mountains. The Dutch painters are per- 
fectly contented with their flat fields and pollards ; ^ 
Rubens, though he had seen the Alps, usually composes 
his landscapes of a hayfield or two, plenty of pollards 
and willows, a distant spire, a Dutch house with a moat 
about it, a windmill, and a ditch. The Flemish sacred 
painters are the only ones who introduce mountains in 
the distance, as we shall see presently; but rather in a 
formal way than with any appearance of enjoyment. 
So Shakspere never speaks of mountains with the 
slightest joy, but only of lowland flowers, flat fields, and 
Warwickshire streams. And if we talk to the moun- 
taineer, he will usually characterize his own country to 
us as a "pays affreux," or in some equivalent, perhaps 
even more violent, German term : but the lowland 
peasant does not think his country frightful ; he either 
will have no ideas beyond it, or about it ; or will think it 
a very perfect country, and be apt to regard any devia- 
tion from its general principle of flatness with extreme 
disfavour; as the Lincolnshire farmer in Alton Locke: 
" I '11 shaw 'ee some'at like a field o' beans, I wool — 
none o' this here darned ups and downs o' hills, to shake 
a body's victuals out of his inwards — all so vlat as a 
barn's vloor, for vorty mile on end — there 's the coun- 
try to live in ! " ^ 

I do not say whether this be altogether right (though 
certainly not wholly wrong), but it seems to me that 
there must be in the simple freshness and f ruitfulness of 

* Pollards, trees polled or cut back at some height above the 
ground, producing a thick growth of young branches in a rounded 
mass. 

^ Quoted, with some omission, from chapter 12. 



96 MODERN PAINTERS 

level land, in its pale upright trees, and gentle lapse of 
silent streams, enough for the satisfaction of the human 
fnind in general; and I so far agree with Homer, that, 
if I had to educate an artist to the full perception of 
the meaning of the word "gracefulness" in landscape, 
I should send him neither to Italy nor to Greece, 
but simply to those poplar groves between Arras and 
Amiens. 

But to return more definitely to our Homeric land- 
scape. When it is perfect, we have, as in the above 
instances, the foliage and meadows together; when im- 
perfect, it is always either the foliage or the meadow; 
pre-eminently the meadow, or arable field. Thus, mead- 
ows of asphodel are prepared for the happier dead; 
and even Orion, a hunter among the mountains in his 
lifetime, pursues the ghosts of beasts in these asphodel 
meadows after death. ^ So the sirens sing in a meadow ; ^ 
and throughout the Odyssey there is a general tendency 
to the depreciation of poor Ithaca, because it is rocky, 
and only fit for goats, and has "no meadows"; ^ for 
which reason Telemachus refuses Atrides's present of 
horses, congratulating the Spartan king at the same 
time on ruling over a plain which has "plenty of lotus 
in it, and rushes," with corn and barley. Note this con- 
stant dwelling on the marsh plants, or, at least, those 
which grow in flat and well-irrigated land, or beside 
streams : when Scamander, for instance, is restrained 
by Vulcan, Homer says, very sorrowfully, that " all his 
lotus, and reeds, and rushes were burnt " ; '' and thus 
Ulysses, after being shipwrecked and nearly drowned, 

^ Odyssey, 11. 572; 24. 13. The couch of Ceres, with Homer's 
usual faithfulness, is made of a "ploughed field, 5. 127. [Ruskin.] 

2 Odyssey, 12. 45. 

3 Odyssey, 4. 605. 
* Iliad, 21. 351. 



OF CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE 97 

and beaten about the sea for many days and nights, on 
raft and mast, at last getting ashore at the mouth of a 
large river, casts himself down first upon its rushes, and 
then, in thankfulness, kisses the "corn-giving land," 
as most opposed, in his heart, to the fruitless and 
devouring sea.^ 

In this same passage, also, we find some peculiar 
expressions of the delight which the Greeks had in 
trees; for, when Ulysses first comes in sight of land, 
which gladdens him "as the reviving of a father from 
his sickness gladdens his children," it is not merely the 
sight of the land itself which gives him such pleasure, 
but of the " land and wood'' Homer never throws away 
any words, at least in such a place as this ; and what in 
another poet would have been merely the filling up of 
the deficient line with an otherwise useless word, is in 
him the expression of the general Greek sense, that land 
of any kind was in no wise grateful or acceptable till 
there was wood upon it (or corn; but the corn, in the 
flats, could not be seen so far as the black masses of 
forest on the hill sides), and that, as in being rushy and 
corn-giving, the low land, so in being woody, the high 
land was most grateful to the mind of the man who for 
days and nights had been wearied on the engulphing 
sea. And this general idea of wood and corn, as the 
types of the fatness of the whole earth, is beautifully 
marked in another place of the Odyssey,"^ where the 
sailors in a desert island, having no flour of corn to 
offer as a meat offering with their sacrifices, take the 
leaves of the trees, and scatter them over the burnt 
offering instead. 

But still, every expression of the pleasure which 

1 Odyssey, 5. 808, 463. [Ruskin.] 

2 Odyssey, 12. 357. [Ruskin.] 



98 MODERN PAINTERS 

Ulysses has in this landing and resting, contains un- 
interruptedly the reference to the utility and sensible 
pleasantness of all things, not to their beauty. After 
his first grateful kiss given to the corn-growing land, 
he considers immediately how he is to pass the night ; 
for some minutes hesitating whether it will be best to 
expose himself to the misty chill from the river, or run 
the risk of wild beasts in the wood. He decides for the 
wood, and finds in it a bower formed by a sweet and 
a wild olive tree, interlacing their branches, or — per- 
haps more accurately translating Homer's intensely 
graphic expression — " changing their branches with 
each other" (it is very curious how often, in an entan- 
glement of wood, one supposes the branches to belong 
to the wrong trees) and forming a roof penetrated by 
neither rain, sun, nor wind. Under this bower Ulysses 
collects the ''vain (or frustrate) outpouring of the dead 
leaves" — another exquisite expression, used else- 
where of useless grief or shedding of tears ; — and, hav- 
ing got enough together, makes his bed of them, and 
goes to sleep, having covered himself up with them, " as 
embers are covered up with ashes." ^ 

Nothing can-possibly be more intensely possessive of 
the facts than this whole passage; the sense of utter 
deadness and emptiness, and frustrate fall in the leaves ; 
of dormant life in the human body, — the fire, and 
heroism, and strength of it, lulled under the dead brown 
heap, as embers under ashes, and the knitting of inter- 
changed and close strength of living boughs above. But 
there is not the smallest apparent sense of there being 
beauty elsewhere than in the human being. The 
wreathed wood is admired simply as being a perfect 
roof for it ; the fallen leaves only as being a perfect bed 
» Odyssey, 5. 481-493. 



OF CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE 99 

for it ; and there is literally no more excitement of emo- 
tion in Homer, as he describes them, nor does he 
expect us to be more excited or touched by hearing 
about them, than if he had been telling us how the 
chambermaid at the Bull aired the four-poster, and put 
on two extra blankets. 

Now, exactly this same contemplation of subservi- 
ence to human use makes the Greek take some plea- 
sure in rocks, when they assume one particular form, 
but one only — that of a cave. They are evidently 
quite frightful things to him under any other condition, 
and most of all if they are rough and jagged ; but if 
smooth, looking "sculptured," like the sides of a ship, 
and forming a cave or shelter for him, he begins to 
think them endurable. Hence, associating the ideas of 
rich and sheltering wood, sea, becalmed and made use- 
ful as a port by protecting promontories of rock, and 
smoothed caves or grottoes in the rocks themselves, we 
get the pleasantest idea which the Greek could form of 
a landscape, next to a marsh with poplars in it; not, 
indeed, if possible, ever to be without these last; thus, 
in commending the Cyclops' country as one possessed 
of every perfection. Homer first says : " They have soft 
marshy meadows near the sea, and good, rich, crum- 
bling, ploughing-land, giving fine deep crops, and vines 
always giving fruit"; then, "a port so quiet, that they 
have no need of cables in it; and at the head of the 
port, a beautiful clear spring just under a cave, and 
aspen poplars all round it.'' ^ 

This, it will be seen, is very nearly Homer's usual 

^ Odyssey, 9. 132, etc. Hence Milton's 

From haunted sprino;, and dale, 
Edcfed with poplar pale. [Ruskin.] 

Hymn on The Morning of Christ's Nativity, 184-185. 



100 MODERN PAINTEBS 

"ideal"; but, going into the middle of the island, 
Ulysses comes on a rougher and less agreeable bit, 
though still fulfilling certain required conditions of 
endurableness; a "cave shaded with laurels," ^ which, 
having no poplars about it, is, however, meant to be 
somewhat frightful, and only fit to be inhabited by a 
Cyclops. So in the country of the Lsestrygons, Homer, 
preparing his reader gradually for something very dis- 
agreeable, represents the rocks as bare and "exposed 
to the sun " ;^only with some smooth and slippery roads 
over them, by which the trucks bring down wood from 
the higher hills. Any one familiar with Swiss slopes 
of hills must remember how often he has descended, 
sometimes faster than was altogether intentional, by 
these same slippery woodman's truck roads. 

And thus, in general, whenever the landscape is 
intended to be lovely, it verges towards the ploughed 
lands and poplars ; or, at worst, to woody rocks ; but, if 
intended to be painful, the rocks are bare and " sharp.'* 
This last epithet, constantly used by Homer for moun- 
tains, does not altogether correspond, in Greek, to the 
English term, nor is it intended merely to characterize 
the sharp mountain summits ; for it never would be 
applied simply to the edge or point of a sword, but sig- 
nifies rather "harsh," "bitter," or "painful," being 
applied habitually to fate, death, and in Odyssey xi. 
333, to a halter; and, as expressive of general objec- 
tionableness and unpleasantness, to all high, danger- 
ous, or peaked mountains, as the Maleian promon- 
tory (a much-dreaded one), the crest of Parnassus, 
the Tereian mountain, and a grim or untoward, though, 
by keeping off the force of the sea, protective, rock 
at the mouth of the Jardanus; as well as habitually 
1 Odyssey, 9. 182. ^ Qdyssey, 10. 87-88. 



OF CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE 101 

to inaccessible or impregnable fortresses built on 
heights. 

In all this I cannot too strongly mark the utter 
absence of any trace of the feeling for what we call the 
picturesque, and the constant dwelling of the writer's 
mind on what was available, pleasant, or useful; his 
ideas respecting all landscape being not uncharacteristi- 
cally summed, finally, by Pallas herself ; when, meeting 
Ulysses, who after his long wandering does not recog- 
nize his own country, and meaning to describe it as 
politely and soothingly as possible, she says : ^ — " This 
Ithaca of ours is, indeed, a rough country enough, and 
not good for driving in; but, still, things might be 
worse: it has plenty of corn, and good wine, and 
always rain, and soft nourishing dew; and it has good 
feeding for goats and oxen, and all manner of wood, 
and springs fit to drink at all the year round." 

We shall see presently how the blundering, pseudo- 
picturesque, pseudo-classical minds of Claude and the 
Renaissance landscape-painters, wholly missing Ho- 
mer's practical common sense, and equally incapable 
of feeling the quiet natural grace and sweetness of his 
asphodel meadows, tender aspen poplars, or running 
vines, — fastened on his forts and caves, as the only 
available features of his scenery; and appointed the 
type of "classical landscape" thenceforward to consist 
in a bay of insipid sea, and a rock with a hole through 
It? 

It may indeed be thought that I am assuming too 
hastily that this was the general view of the Greeks 



^ Odyssey, 13. 236, etc. [Ruskin.] 

^ Educated, as we shall see hereafter, first in this school. Turner 
g;ave the hackneyed composition a strange power and freshness, in his 
Glaucus and Scylla. [Ruskin.] 



102 MODERN PAINTERS 

respecting landscape, because it was Homer's. But I 
believe the true mind of a nation, at any period, is 
always best ascertainable by examining that of its 
greatest men ; and that simpler and truer results will be 
attainable for us by simply comparing Homer, Dante, 
and Walter Scott, than by attempting (what my limits 
must have rendered absurdly inadequate, and in which, 
also, both my time and knowledge must have failed 
me) an analysis of the landscape in the range of con- 
temporary literature. All that I can do, is to state the 
general impression, which has been made upon me by 
my desultory reading, and to mark accurately the 
grounds for this impression in the works of the greatest 
men. Nov" it is quite true that in others of the Greeks, 
especially in iEschylus and Aristophanes, there is 
infinitely more of modern feeling, of pathetic fallacy, 
love of picturesque or beautiful form, and other such 
elements, than there is in Homer ; but then these appear 
to me just the parts of them which were not Greek, the 
elements of their minds by which (as one division of the 
human race always must be with subsequent ones) they 
are connected with the medisevals and moderns. And 
without doubt, in his influence over future mankind. 
Homer is eminently the Greek of Greeks : if I were to 
associate any one with him it would be Herodotus, and 
I believe all I have said of the Homeric landscape will 
be found equally true of the Herodotean, as assuredly 
it will be of the Platonic ; — the contempt, which Plato 
sometimes expresses by the mouth of Socrates, for the 
country in general, except so far as it is shady, and has 
cicadas and running streams to make pleasant noises in 
it, being almost ludicrous. But Homer is the great type, 
and the more notable one because of his influence on 
Virgil, and, through him, on Dante, and all the after 



OF CLASSICAL LANDSCAPE 103 

ages : and, in like manner, if we can get the abstract of 
mediaeval landscape out of Dante, it will serve us as 
well as if we had read all the songs of the troubadours, 
and help us to the farther changes in derivative temper, 
down to all modern time. 

I think, therefore, the reader may safely accept the 
conclusions about Greek landscape which I have got for 
him out of Homer ; and in these he will certainly per- 
ceive something very different from the usual imagina- 
tions we form of Greek feelings. We think of the Greeks 
as poetical, ideal, imaginative, in the way that a modern 
poet or novelist is; supposing that their thoughts 
about their mythology and world were as visionary and 
artificial as ours are : but I think the passages I have 
quoted show that it was not so, although it may be dif- 
ficult for us to apprehend the strange minglings in 
them of the elements of faith, which, in our days, have 
been blended with other parts of human nature in a 
totally different guise. Perhaps the Greek mind may be 
best imagined by taking, as its groundwork, that of a 
good, conscientious, but illiterate Scotch Presbyterian 
Border farmer of a century or two back, having perfect 
faith in the bodily appearances of Satan and his imps ; 
and in all kelpies, brownies, and fairies. Substitute for 
the indignant terrors in this man's mind, a general per- 
suasion of the Divinity, more or less beneficent, yet 
faultful, of all these beings ; that is to say, take away his 
belief in the demoniacal malignity of the fallen spiritual 
world, and lower, in the same degree, his conceptions 
of the angelical, retaining for him the same firm faith 
in both; keep his ideas about flowers and beautiful 
scenery much as they are, — his delight in regular 
ploughed land and meadows, and a neat garden (only 
with rows of gooseberry bushes instead of vines), being, 



104 MODERN PAINTERS 

in all probability, about accurately representative of the 
feelings of Ulysses ; then, let the military spirit that is in 
him, glowing against the Border forager, or the foe of 
old Flodden and Chevy-Chase,^ be made more princi- 
pal, with a higher sense of nobleness in soldiership, not 
as a careless excitement, but a knightly duty; and 
increased by high cultivation of every personal quality, 
not of mere shaggy strength, but graceful strength, 
aided by a softer climate, and educated in all proper 
harmony of sight and sound: finally, instead of an 
informed Christian, suppose him to have only the 
patriarchal Jewish knowledge of the Deity, and even 
this obscured by tradition, but still thoroughly solemn 
and faithful, requiring his continual service as a priest 
of burnt sacrifice and meat offering; and I think we 
shall get a pretty close approximation to the vital being 
of a true old Greek; some slight difference still existing 
in a feeling which the Scotch farmer would have of a 
pleasantness in blue hills and running streams, wholly 
wanting in the Greek mind ; and perhaps also some dif- 
ference of views on the subjects of truth and honesty. 
But the main points, the easy, athletic, strongly logical 
and argumentative, yet fanciful and credulous, char- 
acters of mind, would be very similar in both ; and the 
most serious change in the substance of the stuff 
among the modifications above suggested as necessary 
to turn the Scot into the Greek, is that effect of softer 
climate and surrounding luxury, inducing the practice 

' Flodden, Flodden Field, a plain in Northumberland, famous 
as the battlefield where James IV of Scotland was defeated by an 
English array under the Earl of Surrey, Sept. 9, 1513. The sixth 
canto of Scott's Marmion gives a fairly accurate description of the 
action. 

Chevy-Chase, a famous old English ballad recounting the inci- 
dents of the battle of Otterburn [Aug. 19, 1388] in which the Scots 
under the Earl of Douglas defeated the English under the Percies. 



OF MODERN LANDSCAPE 105 

of various forms of polished art, — the more polished, 
because the practical and realistic tendency of the Hel- 
lenic mind (if my interpretation of it be right) would 
quite prevent it from taking pleasure in any irregulari- 
ties of form, or imitations of the weeds and wildnesses 
of that mountain nature with which it thought itself 
born to contend. In its utmost refinement of work, it 
sought eminently for orderliness ; carried the principle 
of the leeks in squares, and fountains in pipes, per- 
fectly out in its streets and temples ; formalized what- 
ever decoration it put into its minor architectural 
mouldings, and reserved its whole heart and power to 
represent the action of living men, or gods, though not 
unconscious, meanwhile, of 

The simple, the sincere delight; 

The habitual scene of hill and dale; 

The rural herds, the vernal gale; 

The tangled vetches' purple bloom; 

The fragrance of the bean's perfume, — 

Theirs, theirs alone, who cultivate the soil. 

And drink the cup of thirst, and eat the bread of toil.^ 



OF MODERN LANDSCAPE 
Volume III, Chapter 16 

We turn our eyes, therefore, as boldly and as 
quickly as may be, from these serene fields and skies 
of mediaeval art, to the most characteristic examples of 
modern landscape. And, I believe, the first thing that 
will strike us, or that ought to strike us, is their cloudi- 
ness. 

^ Shenstone's Rural Elegance, 201 ff.» quoted with some slight 
inaccuracies. 



106 MODERN PAINTERS 

Out of perfect light and motionless air, we find our- 
selves on a sudden brought under sombre skies, and 
into drifting wind ; and, with fickle sunbeams flashing 
in our face, or utterly drenched with sweep of rain, we 
are reduced to track the changes of the shadows on the 
grass, or watch the rents of twilight through angry 
cloud. And we find that whereas all the pleasure of the 
mediaeval was in stability, definiteness, and luminous- 
ness, we are expected to rejoice in darkness, and tri- 
umph in mutability ; to lay the foundation of happiness 
in things which momentarily change or fade; and to 
expect the utmost satisfaction and instruction from 
what it is impossible to arrest, and difiicult to compre- 
hend. 

We find, however, together with this general delight 
in breeze and darkness, much attention to the real form 
of clouds, and careful drawing of effects of mist ; so that 
the appearance of objects, as seen through it, becomes a 
subject of science with us ; and the faithful representa- 
tion of that appearance is made of primal importance, 
under the name of aerial perspective. The aspects of 
sunset and sunrise, with all their attendant phenomena 
of cloud and mist, are watchfully delineated; and in 
ordinary daylight landscape, the sky is considered of so 
much importance, that a principal mass of foliage, or a 
whole foreground, is unhesitatingly thrown into shade 
merely to bring out the form of a white cloud. So that, 
if a general and characteristic name were needed for 
modern landscape art, none better could be invented 
than "the service of clouds." 

And this name would, unfortunately, be characteris- 
tic of our art in more ways than one. In the last chap- 
ter, I said that all the Greeks spoke kindly about the 
clouds, except Aristophanes ; and he, I am sorry to say 



OF MODERN LANDSCAPE 107 

(since his report is so unfavourable), is the only Greek 
who had studied them attentively. He tells us, first, 
that they are "great goddesses to idle men"; then, that 
they are "mistresses of disputings, and logic, and 
monstrosities, and noisy chattering"; declares that 
whoso believes in their divinity must first disbelieve in 
Jupiter, and place supreme power in the hands of an 
unknown god "Whirlwind"; and, finally, he displays 
their influence over the mind of one of their disciples, in 
his sudden desire "to speak ingeniously concerning 
smoke." ^ 

There is, I fear, an infinite truth in this Aristophanic 
judgment applied to our modern cloud-worship. As- 
suredly, much of the love of mystery in our romances, 
our poetry, our art, and, above all, in our metaphysics, 
must come under that definition so long ago given 
by the great Greek, " speaking ingeniously concerning 
smoke." And much of the instinct, which, partially 
developed in painting, may be now seen throughout 
every mode of exertion of mind, — the easily encour- 
aged doubt, easily excited curiosity, habitual agitation, 
and delight in the changing and the marvellous, as op- 
posed to the old quiet serenity of social custom and 
religious faith, — is again deeply defined in those few 
words, the " dethroning of Jupiter," the "coronation of 
the whirlwind." 

Nor of whirlwind merely, but also of darkness or 
ignorance respecting all stable facts. That darkening of 
the foreground to bring out the white cloud, is, in one 
aspect of it, a type of the subjection of all plain and posi- 
tive fact, to what is uncertain and unintelligible. And, 
as we examine farther into the matter, we shall be 
struck by another great difference between the old and 
' Clouds, 316-318; 380 ff.; 320-321. 



108 MODERN PAINTERS 

modern landscape, namely, that in the old no one ever 
thought of drawing anything but as well as he could. 
That might not be well, as we have seen in the case 
of rocks ; but it was as well as he could, and always dis- 
tinctly. Leaf, or stone, or animal, or man, it was equally 
drawn with care and clearness, and its essential char- 
acters shown. If it was an oak tree, the acorns were 
drawn; if a flint pebble, its veins were drawn; if an 
arm of .he sea, its fish were drawn ; if a group of figures, 
their faces and. dresses were drawn — to the very last 
subtlety of expression and end of thread that could be 
got into the space, far off or near. But now our ingenu- 
ity is all "concerning smoke." Nothing is truly drawn 
but that; all else is vague, slight, imperfect; got with 
as little pains as possible. You examine your closest 
foreground, and find no leaves; your largest oak, and 
find no acorns; your human figure, and find a spot of 
red paint instead of a face ; and in all this, again and 
again, the Aristophanic words come true, and the 
clouds seem to be "great goddesses to idle men.'* 

The next thing that will strike us, after this love of 
clouds, is the love of liberty. Whereas the mediaeval 
was always shutting himself into castles, and behind 
fosses, and drawing brickwork neatly, and beds of 
flowers primly, our painters delight in getting to the 
open fields and moors; abhor all hedges and moats; 
never paint anything but free-growing trees, and rivers 
gliding "at their own sweet will"; eschew formality 
down to the smallest detail; break and displace the 
brickwork which the mediaeval would have carefully 
cemented ; leave unpruned the thickets he would have 
delicately trimmed ; and, carrying the love of liberty 
even to license, and the love of wildness even to ruin, 
take pleasure at last in every aspect of age and desola- 



OF MODERN LANDSCAPE 109 

tion which emancipates the objects of nature from the 
government of men ; — on the castle wall displacing its 
tapestry with ivy, and spreading, through the garden, 
the bramble for the rose. 

Connected with this love of liberty we find a singular 
manifestation of love of mountains, and see our painters 
traversing the wildest places of the globe in order to 
obtain subjects with craggy foregrounds and purple dis- 
tances. Some few of them remain content with pollards 
and flat land ; but these are always men of third-rate 
order ; and the leading masters, while they do not reject 
the beauty of the low grounds, reserve their highest 
powers to paint Alpine peaks or Italian promontories. 
And it is eminently noticeable, also, that this pleasure 
in the mountains is never mingled with fear, or tem- 
pered by a spirit of meditation, as with the mediaeval ; 
but it is always free and fearless, brightly exhilarating, 
and wholly unreflective ; so that the painter feels that 
his mountain foreground may be more consistently ani- 
mated by a sportsman than a hermit ; and our modern 
society in general goes to the mountains, not to fast, 
but to feast, and leaves their glaciers covered with 
chicken-bones and egg-shells. 

Connected with this want of any sense of solemnity in 
mountain scenery, is a general profanity of temper in 
regarding all the rest of nature; that is to say, a total 
absence of faith in the presence of any deity therein. 
Whereas the mediaeval never painted a cloud, but with 
the purpose of placing an angel in it ; and a Greek never 
entered a wood without expecting to meet a god in it ; 
we should think the appearance of an angel in the cloud 
wholly unnatural, and should be seriously surprised by 
meeting a god anywhere. Our chief ideas about the 
wood are connected with poaching. We have no belief 



110 MODERN PAINTERS 

that the clouds contain more than so many inches of 
rain or hail, and from our ponds and ditches expect 
nothing more divine than ducks and watercresses. 

Finally : connected with this profanity of temper is a 
strong tendency to deny the sacred element of colour, 
and make our boast in blackness. For though occasion- 
ally glaring or violent, modern colour is on the whole 
eminently sombre, tending continually to grey or 
brown, and by many of our best painters consistently 
falsified, with a confessed pride in what they call chaste 
or subdued tints; so that, whereas a mediaeval paints 
his sky bright blue and his foreground bright green, 
gilds the towers of his castles, and clothes his figures 
with purple and white, we paint our sky grey, our fore- 
ground black, and our foliage brown, and think that 
enough is sacrificed to the sun in admitting the danger- 
ous brightness of a scarlet cloak or a blue jacket. 

These, I believe, are the principal points which would 
strike us instantly, if we were to be brought suddenly 
into an exhibition of modern landscapes out of a room 
filled with mediaeval work. It is evident that there are 
both evil and good in this change ; but how much evil, 
or how much good, we can only estimate by considering, 
as in the former divisions of our inquiry, what are the 
real roots of the habits of mind which have caused them. 

And first, it is evident that the title "Dark Ages," 
given to the mediaeval centuries, is, respecting art, 
wholly inapplicable. They were, on the contrary, the 
bright ages; ours are the dark ones. I do not mean 
metaphysically, but literally. They were the ages of 
gold ; ours are the ages of umber. 

This is partly mere mistake in us; we build brown 
brick walls, and wear brown coats, because we have 
been blunderingly taught to do so, and go on doing so 



OF MODERN LANDSCAPE 111 

mechanically. There is, however, also some cause for 
the change in our own tempers. On the whole, these 
are much sadder ages than the early ones ; not sadder in 
a noble and deep way, but in a dim wearied way, — the 
way of ennui, and jaded intellect, and uncomfortable- 
ness of soul and body. The Middle Ages had their wars 
and agonies, but also intense delights. Their gold was 
dashed with blood; but ours is sprinkled with dust. 
Their life w as inwoven with white and purple : ours is 
one seamless stuff of brown. Not that we are without 
apparent festivity, but festivity more or less forced, 
mistaken, embittered, incomplete — not of the heart. 
How wonderfully, since Shakspere's time, have we lost 
the power of laughing at bad jests ! The very finish of 
our wit belies our gaiety. 

The profoundest reason of this darkness of heart is, 
I believe, our want of faith. There never yet was a gen- 
eration of men (savage or civilized) who, taken as a 
body, so wofully fulfilled the words " having no hope, 
and without God in the world," ^ as the present civilized 
European race. A Red Indian or Otaheitan savage has 
more sense of a Divine existence round him, or govern- 
ment over him, than the plurality of refined Londoners 
and Parisians : and those among us who may in some 
sense be said to believe, are divided almost without 
exception into two broad classes, Romanist and Puri- 
tan; who, but for the interference of the unbelieving 
portions of society, would, either of them, reduce the 
other sect as speedily as possible to ashes ; the Romanist 
having always done so whenever he could, from the 
beginning of their separation, and the Puritan at this 
time holding himself in complacent expectation of the 
destruction of Rome by volcanic fire. Such division as 
^ Ephesians ii, 12. 



112 MODERN PAINTERS 

this between persons nominally of one religion, that is 
to say, believing in the same God, and the same Revela- 
tion, cannot but become a stumbling-block of the grav- 
est kind to all thoughtful and far-sighted men, — a 
stumbling-block which they can only surmount under 
the most favourable circumstances of early education. 
Hence, nearly all our powerful men in this age of the 
world are unbelievers; the best of them in doubt and 
misery ; the worst in reckless defiance ; the plurality, in 
plodding hesitation, doing, as well as they can, what 
practical work lies ready to their hands. Most of our 
scientific men are in this last class; our popular authors 
either set themselves definitely against all religious 
form, pleading for simple truth and benevolence 
(Thackeray, Dickens), or give themselves up to bitter 
and fruitless statement of facts (De Balzac), or surface- 
painting (Scott), or careless blasphemy, sad or smiling 
(Byron, Beranger). Our earnest poets and deepest 
thinkers are doubtful and indignant (Tennyson, 
Carlyle) ; one or two, anchored, indeed, but anxious or 
weeping (Wordsworth, Mrs. Browning) ; and of these 
two, the first is not so sure of his anchor, but that now 
and then it drags with him, even to make him cry 
out, — 

Great God, I had rather be 

A Pagan suckled in some creed outworn; 
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea. 

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn.^ 

In politics, religion is now a name; in art, a hypo- 
crisy or affectation. Over German religious pictures 
the inscription, " See how Pious I am," can be read at a 
glance by any clear-sighted person. Over French and 
English religious pictures the inscription, "See how 
' Wordsworth's " The world is too much with us." 



OF MODERN LANDSCAPE 113 

Impious I am," is equally legible. All sincere and 
modest art is, among us, profane.^ 

This faithlessness operates among us according to our 
tempers, producing either sadness or levity, and being 
the ultimate root alike of our discontents and of our wan- 
tonnesses. It is marvellous how full of contradiction it 
makes us : we are first dull, and seek for wild and lonely 
places because we have no heart for the garden; pre- 
sently we recover our spirits, and build an assembly 
room among the mountains, because we have no rever- 
ence for the desert. I do not know if there be game on 
Sinai, but I am always expecting to hear of some one's 
shooting over it. 

There is, however, another, and a more innocent 
root of our delight in wild scenery. 

All the Renaissance principles of art tended, as I 
have before often explained, to the setting Beauty 
above Truth, and seeking for it always at the expense 
of truth. And the proper punishment of such pursuit — 
the punishment which all the laws of the universe ren- 
dered inevitable — was, that those who thus pursued 
beauty should wholly lose sight of beauty. All the 
thinkers of the age, as we saw previously, declared 
that it did not exist. The age seconded their efforts, 
and banished beauty, so far as human effort could suc- 
ceed in doing so, from the face of the earth, and the 
form of man. To powder the hair, to patch the cheek, 
to hoop the body, to buckle the foot, were all part and 
parcel of the same system which reduced streets to 
brick walls, and pictures to brown stains. One desert 
of Ugliness was extended before the eyes of mankind ; 

^ Pre-Raphaelitism, of course, excepted, which is a new phase of 
art, in no wise considered in this chapter. Blake was sincere, but full 
of wild creeds, and somewhat diseased in brain. [Ruskin.] 



114 MODERN PAINTERS 

and their pursuit of the beautiful, so recklessly con- 
tinued, received unexpected consummation in high- 
heeled shoes and periwigs, — Gower Street, and Gaspar 
Poussin-^ 

Reaction from this state was inevitable, if any true 
life was left in the races of mankind ; and, accordingly, 
though still forced, by rule and fashion, to the pro- 
ducing and wearing all that is ugly, men steal out, 
half-ashamed of themselves for doing so, to the fields 
and mountains ; and, finding among these the colour, 
and liberty, and variety, and power, which are for ever 
grateful to them, delight in these to an extent never 
before known ; rejoice in all the wildest shattering of the 
mountaifi side, as an opposition to Gower Street, gaze 
in a rapt manner at sunsets and sunrises, to see there 
the blue, and gold, and purple, which glow for them no 
longer on knight's armour or temple porch ; and gather 
with care out of the fields, into their blotted herbaria, 
the flowers which the five orders of architecture have 
banished from th^ir doors and casements. 

The absence of care for personal beauty, which is 
another great characteristic of the age, adds to this 
feeling in a twofold way : first, by turning all reverent 
thoughts away from human nature; and making us 
think of men as ridiculous or ugly creatures, getting 
through the world as well as they can, and spoiling it in 
doing so ; not ruling it in a kingly way and crowning all 
its loveliness. In the Middle Ages hardly anything but 
vice could be caricatured, because virtue was always 
visibly and personally noble : now virtue itself is apt to 
inhabit such poor human bodies, that no aspect of it is 

^ Gower Street, a London street selected as typical of modern 
ugliness. 

Gaspar Poussin [1613-75], a French landscape painter, of the 
pseudo-classical school. 



OF MODERN LANDSCAPE 115 

invulnerable to jest ; and for all fairness we have to seek 
to the flowers, for all sublimity, to the hills. 

The same want of care operates, in another way, by 
lowering the standard of health, increasing the sus- 
ceptibility to nervous or sentimental impressions, and 
thus adding to the other powers of nature over us what- 
ever charm may be felt in her fostering the melancholy 
fancies of brooding idleness. 

It is not, however, only to existing inanimate nature 
that our want of beauty in person and dress has driven 
us. The imagination of it, as it was seen in our ances- 
tors, haunts us continually; and while we yield to the 
present fashions, or act in accordance with the dullest 
modern principles of economy and utility, we look 
fondly back to the manners of the ages of chivalry, and 
delight in painting, to the fancy, the fashions we pre- 
tend to despise, and the splendours we think it wise to 
abandon. The furniture and personages of our romance 
are sought, when the writer desires to please most easily, 
in the centuries which we profess to have surpassed in 
everything ; the art which takes us into the present times 
is considered as both daring and degraded ; and while 
the weakest words please us, and are regarded as 
poetry, which recall the manners of our forefathers, or 
of strangers, it is only as familiar and vulgar that we 
accept the description of our own. 

In this we are wholly different from all the races that 
preceded us. All other nations have regarded their 
ancestors with reverence as saints or heroes ; but have 
nevertheless thought their own deeds and ways of life 
the fitting subjects for their arts of painting or of 
verse. We, on the contrary, regard our ancestors as 
foolish and wicked, but yet find our chief artistic plea- 
sures in descriptions of their ways of life. 



116 MODERN PAINTERS 

The Greeks and medisevals honoured, but did not 
imitate their forefathers ; we imitate, but do not honour. 

With this romantic love of beauty, forced to seek in 
history, and in external nature, the satisfaction it can- 
not find in ordinary life, we mingle a more rational pas- 
sion, the due and just result of newly awakened powers 
of attention. Whatever may first lead us to the scrutiny 
of natural objects, that scrutiny never fails of its reward. 
Unquestionably they are intended to be regarded by us 
with both reverence and delight; and every hour we 
give to them renders their beauty more apparent, and 
their interest more engrossing. Natural science — 
which can hardly be considered to have existed before 
modern times — rendering our knowledge fruitful in 
accumulation, and exquisite in accuracy, has acted for 
good or evil, according to the temper of the mind which 
received it ; and though it has hardened the faithlessness 
of the dull and proud, has shown new grounds for rever- 
ence to hearts which were thoughtful and humble. The 
neglect of the art of war, while it has somewhat weak- 
ened and deformed the body,^ has given us leisure and 
opportunity for studies to which, before, time and space 
were equally wanting; lives which once were early 
wasted on the battle-field are now passed usefully in the 
study; nations which exhausted themselves in annual 
warfare now dispute with each other the discovery of 
new planets; ar^d the serene philosopher dissects the 
plants, and analyzes the dust, of lands which were of 
old only traversed by the knight in hasty march, or by 
the borderer in heedless rapine. 

* Of course this is meant only of the modern citizen or country- 
gentleman, as compared with a citizen of Sparta or old Florence. I 
leave it to others to say whether the "neglect of the art of war" may 
or may not, in a yet more fatal sense, be predicated of the English 
nation. War, without art, we seem, with God's help, able still to wage 
nobly. [Ruskin.] 



OF MODERN LANDSCAPE 117 

The elements of progress and decline being thus 
strangely mingled in the modern mind, we might before- 
hand anticipate that one of the notable characters of 
our art would be its inconsistency ; that efforts would be 
made in every direction, and arrested by every conceiv- 
able cause and manner of failure ; that in all we did, it 
would become next to impossible to distinguish accu- 
rately the grounds for praise or for regret ; that all previ- 
ous canons of practice and methods of thought would 
be gradually overthrown, and criticism continually 
defied by successes which no one had expected, and 
sentiments which no one could define. 

Accordingly, while, in our inquiries into Greek and 
mediaeval art, I was able to describe, in general terms, 
what all men did or felt, I find now many characters 
in many men ; some, it seems to me, founded on the 
inferior and evanescent principles of modernism, on 
its recklessness, impatience, or faithlessness; others 
founded on its science, its new affection for nature, its 
love of openness and liberty. And among all these char- 
acters, good or evil, I see that some, remaining to us 
from old or transitional periods, do not properly belong 
to us, and will soon fade away, and others, though not 
yet distinctly developed, are yet properly our own, and 
likely to grow forward into greater strength. 

For instance : our reprobation of bright colour is, I 
think, for the most part, mere affectation, and must 
soon be done away with. Vulgarity, dulness, or im- 
piety, will indeed always express themselves through 
art in brown and grey, as in Rembrandt, Caravaggio, 
and Salvator; but we are not wholly vulgar, dull, or 
impious; nor, as moderns, are we necessarily obliged 
to continue so in any wise. Our greatest men, whether 
sad or gay, still delight, like the great men of all ages, 



118 MODERN PAINTERS 

in brilliant hues. The colouring of Scott and Byron is 
full and pure ; that of Keats and Tennyson rich even to 
excess. Our practical failures in colouring are merely 
the necessary consequences of our prolonged want of 
practice during the periods of Renaissance affectation 
and ignorance ; and the only durable difference between 
old and modern colouring, is the acceptance of certain 
hues, by the modern, which please him by expressing 
that melancholy peculiar to his more reflective or sen- 
timental character, and the greater variety of them 
necessary to express his greater science. 

Again : if we ever become wise enough to dress con- 
sistently and gracefully, to make health a principal 
object in education, and to render our streets beautiful 
with art, the external charm of past history will in great 
measure disappear. There is no essential reason, be- 
cause we live after the fatal seventeenth century, that 
we should never again be able to confess interest in 
sculpture, or see brightness in embroidery; nor, be- 
cause now we choose to make the night deadly with 
our pleasures, and the day with our labours, prolonging 
the dance till dawn, and the toil to twilight, that we 
should never again learn how rightly to employ the 
sacred trusts of strength, beauty, and time. Whatever 
external charm attaches itself to the past, would then be 
seen in proper subordination to the brightness of pre- 
sent life ; and the elements of romance would exist, in 
the earlier ages, only in the attraction which must gen- 
erally belong to whatever is unfamiliar; in the rever- 
ence which a noble nation always pays to its ancestors ; 
and in the enchanted light which races, like individuals, 
must perceive in looking back to the days of their child- 
hood. 

Again : the peculiar levity with which natural scenery 



OF MODERN LANDSCAPE 119 

is regarded by a large number of modern minds cannot 
be considered as entirely characteristic of the age, inas- 
much as it never can belong to its greatest intellects. 
Men of any high mental power must be serious, 
whether in ancient or modern days : a certain degree of 
reverence for fair scenery is found in all our great 
writers without exception, — even the one who has 
made us laugh oftenest, taking us to the valley of 
Chamouni, and to the sea beach, there to give peace 
after suffering, and change revenge into pity.^ It is only 
the dull, the uneducated, or the worldly, whom it is 
painful to meet on the hillsides ; and levity, as a ruling 
character, cannot be ascribed to the whole nation, but 
only to its holiday-making apprentices, and its House 
of Commons. 

We need not, therefore, expect to find any single poet 
or painter representing the entire group of powers, 
weaknesses, and inconsistent instincts which govern or 
confuse our modern life. But we may expect that in 
the man who seems to be given by Providence as the 
type of the age (as Homer and Dante were given, as 
the types of classical and mediaeval mind), we shall find 
whatever is fruitful and substantial to be completely 
present, together with those of our weaknesses, which 
are indeed nationally characteristic, and compatible 
with general greatness of mind, just as the weak love 
of fences, and dislike of mountains, were found com- 
patible with Dante's greatness in other respects. 

Farther : as the admiration of mankind is found, in 
our times, to have in great part passed from men to 
mountains, and from human emotion to natural phe- 
nomena, we may anticipate that the great strength 
of art will also be warped in this direction ; with this 

1 See David Copper field, chap. 55 and 58. [Ruskin.] 



120 MODERN PAINTERS 

notable result for us, that whereas the greatest paint- 
ers or painter of classical and mediaeval periods, being 
wholly devoted to the representation of humanity, fur- 
nished us with but little to examine in landscape, the 
greatest painters or painter of modern times will in 
all probability be devoted to landscape principally; 
and farther, because in representing human emotion 
words surpass painting, but in representing natural 
scenery painting surpasses words, we may anticipate 
also that the painter and poet (for convenience' sake 
I here use the words in opposition) will somewhat 
change their relations of rank in illustrating the mind 
of the age ; that the painter will become of more impor- 
tance, the poet of less ; and that the relations between the 
men who are the types and firstfruits of the age in 
word and work, — namely, Scott and Turner, — will 
be, in many curious respects, different from those be- 
tween Homer and Phidias, or Dante and Giotto.* 



THE TWO BOYHOODS 

Volume V, Part 9, Chapter 9 

Born half-way between the mountains and the sea 
■ — that young George of Castelfranco — of the Brave 
Castle : — Stout George they called him, George of 
Georges, so goodly a boy he was — Giorgione.^ 

Have you ever thought what a world his eyes opened 
on — fair, searching eyes of youth ? What a world 
of mighty life, from those mountain roots to the shore ; 

^ Ruskin proceeds to discuss Scott as he has discussed Homer. 
The chapter on Turner that follows here is an aknost equally good 
illustration of Ruskin's ideas. 

2 c. 1478-1511. 



THE TWO BOYHOODS 121 

— of loveliest life, when he went down, yet so young, 
to the marble city — and became himself as a fiery 
heart to it ? 

A city of marble, did I say? nay, rather a golden 
city, paved with emerald. For truly, every pinnacle 
and turret glanced or glowed, overlaid with gold, or 
bossed with jasper. Beneath, the unsullied sea drew 
in deep breathing, to and fro, its eddies of green wave. 
Deep-hearted, majestic, terrible as the sea, — the men 
of Venice moved in sway of power and war; pure as 
her pillars of alabaster, stood her mothers and maid- 
ens ; from foot to brow, all noble, walked her knights ; 
the low bronzed gleaming of sea-rusted armour shot 
angrily under their blood-red mantle-folds. Fearless, 
faithful, patient, impenetrable, implacable, — every 
word a fate — sate her senate. In hope and honour, 
lulled by flowing of wave around their isles of sacred 
sand, each with his name written and the cross graved 
at his side, lay her dead. A wonderful piece of world. 
Rather, itself a world. It lay along the face of the 
waters, no larger, as its captains saw it from their 
masts at evening, than a bar of sunset that could not 
pass away; but for its power, it must have seemed to 
them as if they were sailing in the expanse of heaven, 
and this a great planet, whose orient edge widened 
through ether. A world from which all ignoble care 
and petty thoughts were banished, with all the com- 
mon and poor elements of life. No foulness, nor tu- 
mult, in those tremulous streets, that filled, or fell, be- 
neath the moon ; but rippled music of majestic change, 
or thrilling silence. No weak walls could rise above 
them; no low-roofed cottage, nor straw-built shed. 
Only the strength as of rock, and the finished setting 
of stones most precious. And around them, far as the 



122 MODERN PAINTERS 

eye could reach, still the soft moving of stainless waters, 
proudly pure; as not the flower, so neither the thorn 
nor the thistle, could grow in the glancing fields. Ethe- 
real strength of Alps, dreamlike, vanishing in high 
procession beyond the Torcellan shore; blue islands 
of Paduan hills, poised in the golden west. Above, 
free winds and fiery clouds ranging at their will; — 
brightness out of the north, and balm from the south, 
and the stars of the evening and morning clear in the 
limitless light of arched heaven and circling sea. 

Such was Giorgione's school — such Titian's home. 

Near the south-west corner of Covent Garden, a 
square brick pit or well is formed by a close-set block 
of houses, to the back windows of which it admits a 
few rays of light. Access to the bottom of it is obtained 
out of Maiden Lane, through a low archway and an 
iron gate ; and if you stand long enough under the arch- 
way to accustom your eyes to the darkness you may 
see on the left hand a narrow door, which formerly 
gave quiet access to a respectable barber's shop, of 
which the front window, looking into Maiden Lane, 
is still extant, filled, in this year (1860), with a row 
of bottles, connected, in some defunct manner, with a 
brewer's business. A more fashionable neighbourhood, 
it is said, eighty years ago than now — never certainly 
a cheerful one — wherein a boy being born on St. 
George's day, 1775, began soon after to take interest 
in the world of Covent Garden, and put to service such 
spectacles of life as it afforded. 

No knights to be seen there, nor, I imagine, many 
beautiful ladies ; their costume at least disadvantageous, 
depending much on incumbency of hat and feather, 
and short waists ; the majesty of men founded similarly 
on shoebuckles and wigs ; — impressive enough when 



THE TWO BOYHOODS 123 

Reynolds will do his best for it ; but not suggestive of 
much ideal delight to a boy. 

"Bello ovile dov' io dormii agnello";* of things 
beautiful, besides men and women, dusty sunbeams 
up or down the street on summer mornings ; deep fur- 
rowed cabbage-leaves at the greengrocer's; magnifi- 
cence of oranges in wheelbarrows round the corner; 
and Thames' shore within three minutes' race. 

None of these things very glorious; the best, how- 
ever, that England, it seems, was then able to provide 
for a boy of gift : who, such as they are, loves them — 
never, indeed, forgets them. The short waists modify 
to the last his visions of Greek ideal. His foregrounds 
had always a succulent cluster or two of greengrocery 
at the corners. Enchanted oranges gleam in Covent 
Gardens of the Hesperides ; and great ships go to pieces 
in order to scatter chests of them on the waves. ^ That 
mist of early sunbeams in the London dawn crosses, 
many and many a time, the clearness of Italian air; 
and by Thames' shore, with its stranded barges and 
glidings of red sail, dearer to us than Lucerne lake or 
Venetian lagoon, — by Thames' shore we will die. 

With such circumstance round him in youth, let 
us note what necessary effects followed upon the boy. 
I assume him to have had Giorgione's sensibility (and 
more than Giorgione's, if that be possible) to colour and 
form. I tell you farther, and this fact you may receive 
trustfully, that his sensibility to human affection and 
distress was no less keen than even his sense for natu- 
ral beauty — heart-sight deep as eyesight. 

Consequently, he attaches himself with the faith- 

^ Dante, alluding to Florence, Paradiso, 25. 5. " From the fair 
sheepfold, where a lamb I slumbered." Longfellow's tr. 

^ Allusions to pictures by Turner, The Garden of the Hesperides, 
and The Meuse : Orange-Merchantman going to pieces on the Bar. 



124 MODERN PAINTERS 

fullest child-love to everything that bears an image of 
the place he was born in. No matter how ugly it is, 
— has it anything about it like Maiden Lane, or like 
Thames' shore ? If so, it shall be painted for their sake. 
Hence, to the very close of life. Turner could endure 
ugliness which no one else, of the same sensibility, 
would have borne with for an instant. Dead brick walls, 
blank square windows, old clothes, market-womanly 
types of humanity — anything fishy and muddy, like 
Billingsgate or Hungerford Market, had great attrac- 
tion for him; black barges, patched sails, and every 
possible condition of fog. 

You will find these tolerations and affections guid- 
ing or sustaining him to the last hour of his life ; the 
notablest of all such endurances being that of dirt. No 
Venetian ever draws anything foul; but Turner de- 
voted picture after picture to the illustration of effects 
of dinginess, smoke, soot, dust, and dusty texture; 
old sides of boats, weedy roadside vegetation, dung- 
hills, straw-yards, and all the soilings and stains of 
every common labour. 

And more than this, he not only could endure, but 
enjoyed and looked for litter, like Covent Garden 
wreck after the market. His pictures are often full of 
it, from side to side ; their foregrounds differ from all 
others in the natural way that things have of lying 
about in them. Even his richest vegetation, in ideal 
work, is confused; and he delights in shingle, debris, 
and heaps of fallen stones. The last words he ever 
spoke to me about a picture were in gentle exultation 
about his St. Gothard : " that litter of stones which I 
endeavoured to represent." 

The second great result of this Covent Garden train- 
ing was, understanding of and regard for the poor. 



THE TWO BOYHOODS 125 

whom the Venetians, we saw, despised ; whom, contra- 
rily, Turner loved, and more than loved — understood. 
He got no romantic sight of them, but an infallible 
one, as he prowled about the end of his lane, watching 
night effects in the wintry streets ; nor sight of the poor 
alone, but of the poor in direct relations with the rich. 
He knew, in good and evil, what both classes thought 
of, and how they dwelt with, each other. 

Reynolds and Gainsborough, bred in country vil- 
lages, learned there the country boy's reverential theory 
of "the squire," and kept it. They painted the squire 
and the squire's lady as centres of the movements of 
the universe, to the end of their lives. But Turner per- 
ceived the younger squire in other aspects about his 
lane, occurring prominently in its night scenery, as a 
dark figure, or one of two, against the moonlight. He 
saw also the working of city commerce, from endless 
warehouse, towering over Thames, to the back shop 
in the lane, with its stale herrings — highly interesting 
these last; one of his father's best friends, whom he 
often afterwards visited affectionately at Bristol, being 
a fishmonger and glue-boiler ; which gives us a friendly 
turn of mind towards herring-fishing, whaling, Calais 
poissardes, and many other of our choicest subjects 
in after life ; all this being connected with that mysteri- 
ous forest below London Bridge on one side ; — and, on 
the other, with these masses of human power and na- 
tional wealth which weigh upon us, at Covent Garden 
here, with strange compression, and crush us into 
narrow Hand Court. 

" That mysterious forest below London Bridge " — 
better for the boy than wood of pine, or grove of 
myrtle. How he must have tormented the watermen, 
beseeching them to let him crouch anywhere in the 



126 MODERN PAINTERS 

bows, quiet as a log, so only that he might get floated 
down there among the ships, and round and round the 
ships, and with the ships, and by the ships, and under 
the ships, staring, and clambering ; — these the only 
quite beautiful things he can see in all the world, ex- 
cept the sky; but these, when the sun is on their sails, 
filling or falling, endlessly disordered by sway of tide 
and stress of anchorage, beautiful unspeakably ; which 
ships also are inhabited by glorious creatures — red- 
faced sailors, with pipes, appearing over the gunwales, 
true knights, over their castle parapets — the most 
angelic beings in the whole compass of London world. 
And Trafalgar happening long before we can draw 
ships, we, nevertheless, coax all current stories out of 
the wounded sailors, do our best at present to show 
Nelson's funeral streaming up the Thames; and vow 
that Trafalgar shall have its tribute of memory some 
day. Which, accordingly, is accomplished — once, 
with all our might, for its death; twice, with all our 
might, for its victory ; thrice, in pensive farewell to the 
old Temeraire, and, with it, to that order of things.* 

Now this fond companying with sailors must have 
divided his time, it appears to me, pretty equally be- 
tween Covent Garden and Wapping (allowing for 
incidental excursions to Chelsea on one side, and 
Greenwich on the other), which time he would spend 
pleasantly, but not magnificently, being limited in 
pocket-money, and leading a kind of "Poor- Jack" 
life on the river. 

In some respects, no life could be better for a lad, 
But it was not calculated to make his ear fine to the 

* The pictures referred to are: The Death of Nelson, The Battle 
of Trafalgar, and The Fighting Temeraire being towed to its Last 
Berth (see cut). The first and third are in the National Gallery, 
London. 




o 

O 

xn 

U 
H 



THE TWO BOYHOODS 127 

niceties of language, nor form his moralities on an en- 
tirely regular standard. Picking up his first scraps of 
vigorous English chiefly at Deptford and in the mar- 
kets, and his first ideas of female tenderness and beauty 
among nymphs of the barge and the barrow, — another 
boy might, perhaps, have become what people usually 
term "vulgar." But the original make and frame of 
Turner's mind being not vulgar, but as nearly as pos- 
sible a combination of the minds of Keats and Dante, 
joining capricious waywardness, and intense openness 
to every fine pleasure of sense, and hot defiance of 
formal precedent, with a quite infinite tenderness, 
generosity, and desire of justice and truth — this kind 
of mind did not become vulgar, but very tolerant of 
vulgarity, even fond of it in some forms; and on the 
outside, visibly infected by it, deeply enough; the cu- 
rious result, in its combination of elements, being to 
most people wholly incomprehensible. It was as if a 
cable had been woven of blood-crimson silk, and then 
tarred on the outside. People handled it, and the tar 
came off on their hands ; red gleams were seen through 
the black, underneath, at the places where it had been 
strained. Was it ochre ? — said the world — or red 
lead? 

Schooled thus in manners, literature, and general 
moral principles at Chelsea and Wapping, we have 
finally to inquire concerning the most important point 
of all. We have seen the principal differences between 
this boy and Giorgione, as respects sight of the beauti- 
ful, understanding of poverty, of commerce, and of 
order of battle ; then follows another cause of difference 
in our training — not slight, — the aspect of religion, 
namely, in the neighbourhood of Co vent Garden. I 
say the aspect ; for that was all the lad could judge by. 



128 MODERN PAINTERS 

Disposed, for the most part, to learn chiefly by his 
eyes, in this special matter he finds there is really no 
other way of learning. His father had taught him " to 
lay one penny upon another." Of mother's teaching, 
we hear of none; of parish pastoral teaching, the 
reader may guess how much. 

I chose Giorgione rather than Veronese to help me in 
carrying out this parallel; because I do not find in 
Giorgione's work any of the early Venetian monarchist 
element. He seems to me to have belonged more to 
an abstract contemplative school. I may be wrong in 
this ; it is no matter; — suppose it were so, and that he 
came down to Venice somewhat recusant, or insen- 
tient, concerning the usual priestly doctrines of his 
day, — how would the Venetian religion, from an outer 
intellectual standing-point, have looked to him ? 

He would have seen it to be a religion indisputably 
powerful in human affairs; often very harmfully so; 
sometimes devouring widows' houses,^ and consuming 
the strongest and fairest from among the young ; freez- 
ing into merciless bigotry the policy of the old : also, on 
the other hand, animating national courage, and raising 
souls, otherwise sordid, into heroism: on the whole, 
always a real and great power ; served with daily sacri- 
fice of gold, time, and thought ; putting forth its claims, 
if hypocritically, at least in bold hypocrisy, not waiving 
any atom of them in doubt or fear; and, assuredly, in 
large measure, sincere, believing in itself, and believed : 
a goodly system, moreover, in aspect; gorgeous, har- 
monious, mysterious ; — a thing which had either to be 
obeyed or combated, but could not be scorned. A reli- 
gion towering over all the city — many-buttressed — 
luminous in marble stateliness, as the dome of our Lady 
^ Matthew xxiii, 14. 



THE TWO BOYHOODS 129 

of Safety ^ shines over the sea ; many-voiced also, giv- 
ing, over all the eastern seas, to the sentinel his watch- 
word, to the soldier his war-cry ; and, on the lips of all 
who died for Venice, shaping the whisper of death. 

1 suppose the boy Turner to have regarded the reli- 
gion of his city also from an external intellectual stand- 
ing-point. 

What did he see in Maiden Lane "? 

Let not the reader be offended with me ; I am willing 
to let him describe, at his own pleasure, what Turner 
saw there; but to me, it seems to have been this. A 
religion maintained occasionally, even the whole length 
of the lane, at point of constable's staff ; but, at other 
times, placed under the custody of the beadle, within 
certain black and unstately iron railings of St. Paul's, 
Covent Garden. Among the wheelbarrows and over 
the vegetables, no perceptible dominance of religion; 
in the narrow, disquieted streets, none ; in the tongues, 
deeds, daily ways of Maiden Lane, little. Some hon- 
esty, indeed, and English industry, and kindness of 
heart, and general idea of justice ; but faith, of any na- 
tional kind, shut up from one Sunday to the next, not 
artistically beautiful even in those Sabbatical exhibi- 
tions; its paraphernalia being chiefly of high pews, 
heavy elocution, and cold grimness of behaviour. 

What chiaroscuro belongs to it — (dependent mostly 
on candlelight) , — we will, however, draw considerately ; 
no goodliness of escutcheon, nor other respectability 
being omitted, and the best of their results confessed, 
a meek old woman and a child being let into a pew, for 
whom the reading by candlelight will be beneficial.^ 

^ Santa Maria della Salute, a church conspicuously situated at the 
junction of the Grand Canal and the Giudecca. 

2 Liber Studiorum. "Interior of a church." It is worthy of 
remark that Giorgione and Titian are always delighted to have 



130 MODERN PAINTERS 

For the rest, this religion seems to him discreditable 
— discredited — not believing in itself ; putting forth 
its authority in a cowardly way, watching how far it 
might be tolerated, continually shrinking, disclaiming, 
fencing, finessing ; divided against itself, not by stormy 
rents, but by thin fissures, and splittings of plaster 
from the walls. Not to be either obeyed, or combated, 
by an ignorant, yet clear-sighted youth ; only to be 
scorned. And scorned not one whit the less, though 
also the dome dedicated to it looms high over distant 
winding of the Thames; as St. Mark's campanile 
rose, for goodly landmark, over mirage of lagoon. For 
St. Mark ruled over life; the Saint of London over 
death; St. Mark over St. Mark's Place, but St. Paul 
over St. Paul's Churchyard. 

Under these influences pass away the first reflective 
hours of life, with such conclusion as they can reach. 
In consequence of a fit of illness, he was taken — I can- 
not ascertain in what year ^ — to live with an aunt, at 
Brentford ; and here, I believe, received some school- 
ing, which he seems to have snatched vigorously ; get- 
ting knowledge, at least by translation, of the more 
picturesque classical authors, which he turned pre- 
sently to use, as we shall see. Hence also, walks about 
Putney and Twickenham in the summer time ac- 
quainted him with the look of English meadow-ground 
in its restricted states of paddock and park; and with 
some round-headed appearances of trees, and stately 
entrances to houses of mark : the avenue at Bushy, and 
the iron gates and carved pillars of Hampton,^ impress- 

an opportunity of drawing priests. The English Church may, 
perhaps, accept it as matter of congratulation that this is the only 
instance in which Turner drew a clergyman. [Ruskin.] 

1 1785. 

2 Wolsey's famous palace, twelve miles from London. 



THE TWO BOYHOODS 131 

ing him apparently with great awe and admiration ; so 
that in after Hfe his Httle country house is, — of all 
places in the world, — at Twickenham ! Of swans and 
reedy shores he now learns the soft motion and the 
green mystery, in a way not to be forgotten. 

And at last fortune wills that the lad's true life shall 
begin ; and one summer's evening, after various won- 
derful stage-coach experiences on the north road, which 
gave him a love of stage-coaches ever after, he finds 
himself sitting alone among the Yorkshire hills. ^ For 
the first time, the silence of Nature round him, her free- 
dom sealed to him, her glory opened to him. Peace at 
last ; no roll of cart-wheel, nor mutter of sullen voices in 
the back shop ; but curlew-cry in space of heaven, and 
welling of bell-toned streamlet by its shadowy rock. 
Freedom at last. Dead-wall, dark railing, fenced field, 
gated garden, all passed away like the dream of a 
prisoner; and behold, far as foot or eye can race or 
range, the moor, and cloud. Loveliness at last. It is 
here, then, among these deserted vales! Not among 
men. Those pale, poverty-struck, or cruel faces; — 
that multitudinous, marred humanity — are not the 
only things that God has made. Here is something 
He has made which no one has marred. Pride of purple 
rocks, and river pools of blue, and tender wilderness 
of glittering trees, and misty lights of evening on im- 
measurable hills. 

Beauty, and freedom, and peace; and yet another 

teacher, graver than these. Sound preaching at last 

here, in Kirkstall crypt, concerning fate and life. Here, 

where the dark pool reflects the chancel pillars, and the 

* I do not mean that this is his first acquaintance with the coun- 
try, but the first impressive and touching one, after his mind was 
formed. The earliest sketches I found in the National Collection 
are at Clifton and Bristol; the next, at Oxford. [Ruskin.] 



132 MODERN PAINTERS 

cattle lie in unhindered rest, the soft sunshine on their 
dappled bodies, instead of priests' vestments; their 
white furry hair ruffled a little, fitfully, by the evening 
wind deep-scented from the meadow thyme. 

Consider deeply the import to him of this, his first 
sight of ruin, and compare it with the effect of the 
architecture that was around Giorgione. There were 
indeed aged buildings, at Venice, in his time, but none 
in decay. All ruin was removed, and its place filled as 
quickly as in our London ; but filled always by architec- 
ture loftier and more wonderful than that whose place 
it took, the boy himself happy to work upon the walls of 
it ; so that the idea of the passing away of the strength of 
men and beauty of their works never could occur to him 
sternly. Brighter and brighter the cities of Italy had 
been rising and broadening on hill and plain, for three 
hundred years. He saw only strength and immortality, 
could not but paint both ; conceived the form of man as 
deathless, calm with power, and fiery with life. 

Turner saw the exact reverse of this. In the pre- 
sent work of men, meanness, aimlessness, unsight- 
liness: thin -walled, lath -divided, narrow - garreted 
houses of clay; booths of a darksome Vanity Fair, 
busily base. 

But on Whitby Hill, and by Bolton Brook,^ remained 
traces of other handiwork. Men who could build had 
been there ; and who also had wrought, not merely for 
their own days. But to what purpose ? Strong faith, 
and steady hands, and patient souls — can this, then, 
be all you have left! this the sum of your doing on the 
earth ! — a nest whence the night-owl may whimper to 
the brook, and a ribbed skeleton of consumed arches, 

^ The reference is to tlie two famous ruined abbeys of Yorkshire 
— Whitby and Bolton. 



THE TWO BOYHOODS 133 

looming above the bleak banks of mist, from its cliff to 
the sea? 

As the strength of men to Giorgione, to Turner their 
weakness and vileness, were alone visible. They them- 
selves, unworthy or ephemeral ; their work, despicable, 
or decayed. In the Venetian's eyes, all beauty depended 
on man's presence and pride ; in Turner's, on the soli- 
tude he had left, and the humiliation he had suffered. 

And thus the fate and issue of all his work were de- 
termined at once. He must be a painter of the strength 
of nature, there was no beauty elsewhere than in that ; 
he must paint also the labour and sorrow and passing 
away of men : this was the great human truth visible to 
him. 

Their labour, their sorrow, and their death. Mark 
the three. Labour; by sea and land, in field and city, 
at forge and furnace, helm and plough. No pastoral 
indolence nor classic pride shall stand between him and 
the troubling of the world ; still less between him and 
the toil of his country, — blind, tormented, unwearied, 
marvellous England. 

Also their Sorrow; Ruin of all their glorious work, 
passing away of their thoughts and their honour, mirage 
of pleasure. Fallacy of Hope ; gathering of weed on 
temple step ; gaining of wave on deserted strand ; weep- 
ing of the mother for the children, desolate by her 
breathless first-born in the streets of the city,^ desolate 
by her last sons slain, among the beasts of the field. ^ 

And their Death. That old Greek question again; 
— yet unanswered. The unconquerable spectre still 
flitting among the forest trees at twilight ; rising ribbed 
out of the sea-sand; — white, a strange Aphrodite, — 

1 The Tenth Plague of Egypt. [Ruskin.] 

2 Rizpah, the Daughter of Aiah. [Ruskin.] 



134 MODERN PAINTERS 

out of the sea-foam ; stretching its grey, cloven wings 
among the clouds ; turning the light of their sunsets 
into blood. This has to be looked upon, and in a more 
terrible shape than ever Salvator or Durer saw it.^ The 
wreck of one guilty country does not infer the ruin of 
all countries, and need not cause general terror respect- 
ing the laws of the universe. Neither did the orderly 
and narrow succession of domestic joy and sorrow in a 
small German community bring the question in its 
breadth, or in any unresolvable shape, before the mind 
of DUrer. But the English death — the European death 
of the nineteenth century — was of another range and 
power ; more terrible a thousandfold in its merely phy- 
sical grasp and grief; more terrible, incalculably, in its 
mystery and shame. What were the robber's casual 
pang, or the range of the flying skirmish, compared to 
the work of the axe, and the sword, and the famine, 
which was done during this man's youth on all the hills 
and plains of the Christian earth, from Moscow to 
Gibraltar .^ He was eighteen years old when Napoleon 
came down on Areola. Look on the map of Europe and 
count the blood-stains on it, between Areola and 
Waterloo.^ 

Not alone those blood-stains on the Alpine snow, and 
the blue of the Lombard plain. The English death was 
before his eyes also. No decent, calculable, consoled 
dying ; no passing to rest like that of the aged burghers 
of Nuremberg town. No gentle processions to church- 
yards among the fields, the bronze crests bossed deep 
on the memorial tablets, and the skylark singing above 
them from among the corn. But the life trampled out 

^ Diirer [1471-1528], German painter, enja^raver, and designer. 
Salvator [1615-73], Italian painter, etcher, satirical poet, and musical 
composer. 

2 1. e., between November 17, 1796, and June 18, 1815. 



THE TWO BOYHOODS 135 

in the slime of the street, crushed to dust amidst the 
roaring of the wheel, tossed countlessly away into howl- 
ing winter wind along five hundred leagues of rock- 
fanged shore. Or, worst of all, rotted down to forgotten 
graves through years of ignorant patience, and vain 
seeking for help from man, for hope in God — infirm, 
imperfect yearning, as of motherless infants starving at 
the dawn ; oppressed royalties of captive thought, vague 
ague-fits of bleak, amazed despair. 

A goodly landscape this, for the lad to paint, and 
under a goodly light. Wide enough the light was, and 
clear; no more Salvator's lurid chasm on jagged hori- 
zon, nor Durer's spotted rest of sunny gleam on hedge- 
row and field ; but light over all the world. Full shone 
now its awful globe, one pallid charnel-house, — a ball 
strewn bright with human ashes, glaring in poised sway 
beneath the sun, all blinding-white with death from 
pole to pole, — death, not of myriads of poor bodies 
only, but of will, and mercy, and conscience ; death, not 
once inflicted on the flesh, but daily, fastening on the 
spirit ; death, not silent or patient, waiting his appointed 
hour, but voiceful, venomous ; death with the taunting 
word, and burning grasp, and infixed sting. 

"Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe." ^ The 
word is spoken in our ears continually to other reapers 
than the angels, — to the busy skeletons that never 
tire for stooping. When the measure of iniquity is full, 
and it seems that another day might bring repentance 
and redemption, — "Put ye in the sickle." When the 
young life has been wasted all away, and the eyes are 
just opening upon the tracks of ruin, and faint resolu- 
tion rising in the heart for nobler things, — " Put ye in 
the sickle." When the roughest blows of fortune have 
* Joel iii, 13. 



136 MODERN PAINTERS 

been borne long and bravely, and the hand is just 
stretched to grasp its goal, — " Put ye in the sickle." 
And when there are but a few in the midst of a nation, 
to save it, or to teach, or to cherish ; and all its life is 
bound up in those few golden ears, — " Put ye in the 
sickle, pale reapers, and pour hemlock for your feast 
of harvest home." 

This was the sight which opened on the young eyes, 
this the watchword sounding within the heart of 
Turner in his youth. 

So taught, and prepared for his life's labour, sate the 
boy at last alone among his fair English hills ; and began 
to paint, with cautious toil, the rocks, and fields, and 
trickling brooks, and soft white clouds of heaven. 



SELECTIONS FROM 
THE STONES OF VENICE 

The first volume of The Stones of Venice appeared in 
March, 1851 ; the first day of May of the same year we 
find the following entry in Ruskm's diary : " About to 
enter on the true beginning of the second part of my Vene- 
tian work. May God help me to finish it — to His glory, 
and man's good." The main part of the volume was com- 
posed at Venice in the winter of 1851-52, though it did 
not appear until the end of July, 1853. His work on 
architecture, including The Seven Lamps, it will be 
noted, intervenes between the composition of the second 
and third volumes of Modern Painters ; and Ruskin him- 
self always looked upon the work as an interlude, almost 
as an interruption. But he also came to believe that this 
digression had really led back to the heart of the truth for 
all art. Its main theme, as in The Seven Lamps of Archi- 
tecture, is its illustration of the principle that architecture 
expresses certain states in the moral temper of the people 
by and for whom it is produced. It may surprise us to-day 
to know that when Ruskin wrote of the glories of Vene- 
tian architecture, the common '' professional opinion was 
that St. Mark's and the Ducal Palace were as ugly and 
repulsive as they were contrary to rule and order." In a 
private letter Gibbon writes of the Square of St. Mark's as 
" a large square decorated with the worst architecture I 
ever saw." The architects of his own time regarded Rus- 
kin's opinions as dictated by wild caprice, and almost 
evincing an unbalanced mind. Probably the core of all 
this architectural work is to be found in his chapter " On 
the Nature of Gothic," in the main reproduced in this vol- 
ume. And we find here again a point of fundamental sig- 
nificance — that his artistic analysis led him inevitably 
on to social inquiries. He proved to himself that the 
main virtue of Gothic lay in the unrestricted play of the 



138 THE STONES OF VENICE 

individual imagination ; that the best results were produced 
when every artist was a workman and every workman an 
artist. Twenty years after the publication of this book, he 
wrote in a private letter that his main purpose " was to 
show the dependence of (architectural) beauty on the hap- 
piness and fancy of the workman, and to show also that 
no architect could claim the title to authority of Magister 
unless he himself wrought at the head of his men, captain 
of manual skill, as the best knight is captain of armies." 
He himself called the chapter "precisely and accurately 
the most important in the whole book." Mr. Frederic 
Harrison says that in it is " the creed, if it be not the 
origin, of a new industrial school of thought." 



THE THRONE 

Volume II, Chapter 1 

In the olden days of travelling, now to return no 
.more, in which distance could not be vanquished with- 
out toil, but in which that toil was rewarded, partly by 
the power of deliberate survey of the countries through 
which the journey lay, and partly by the happiness of 
the evening hours, when from the top of the last hill he 
had surmounted, the traveller beheld the quiet village 
where he was to rest, scattered among the meadows 
beside its valley stream; or, from the long hoped for 
turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, saw, for 
the first time, the towers of some famed city, faint in 
the rays of sunset — hours of peaceful and thoughtful 
pleasure, for which the rush of the arrival in the railway 
station is perhaps not always, or to all men, an equiva- 
lent, — in those days, I say, when there was something 
more to be anticipated and remembered in the first 
aspect of each successive halting-place, than a new 



THE THRONE 139 

arrangement of glass roofing and iron girder, there were 
few moments of which the recollection was more fondly 
cherished by the traveller, than that which, as I en- 
deavoured to describe in the close of the last chapter, 
brought him within sight of Venice, as his gondola shot 
into the open lagoon from the canal of Mestre. Not but 
that the aspect of the city itself was generally the source 
of some slight disappointment, for, seen in this direc- 
tion, its buildings are far less characteristic than those 
of the other great towns of Italy ; but this inferiority was 
partly disguised by distance, and more than atoned for 
by the strange rising of its walls and towers out of the 
midst, as it seemed, of the deep sea, for it was impos- 
sible that the mind or the eye could at once comprehend 
the shallowness of the vast sheet of water which 
stretched away in leagues of rippling lustre to the north 
and south, or trace the narrow line of islets bounding it 
to the east. The salt breeze, the white moaning sea- 
birds, the masses of black weed separating and disap- 
pearing gradually, in knots of heaving shoal, under the 
advance of the steady tide, all proclaimed it to be indeed 
the ocean on whose bosom the great city rested so 
calmly; not such blue, soft, lake-like ocean as bathes 
the Neapolitan promontories, or sleeps beneath the 
marble rocks of Genoa, but a sea with the bleak power 
of our own northern waves, yet subdued into a strange 
spacious rest, and changed from its angry pallor into a 
field of burnished gold, as the sun declined behind the 
belfry tower of the lonely island church, fitly named 
" St. George of the Seaweed." As the boat drew nearer 
to the city, the coast which the traveller had just left 
sank behind him into one long, low, sad-coloured line, 
tufted irregularly with brushwood and willows : but, at 
what seemed its northern extremity, the hills of Arqua 



140 THE STONES OF VENICE 

rose in a dark cluster of purple pyramids, balanced on 
the bright mirage of the lagoon ; two or three smooth 
surges of inferior hill extended themselves about their 
roots, and beyond these, beginning with the craggy 
peaks above Vicenza, the chain of the Alps girded the 
whole horizon to the north — a wall of jagged blue, 
here and there showing through its clefts a wilderness 
of misty precipices, fading far back into the recesses of 
Cadore, and itself rising and breaking away eastward, 
where the sun struck opposite upon its snow, into 
mighty fragments of peaked light, standing up behind 
the barred clouds of evening, one after another, count- 
less, the crown of the Adrian Sea, until the eye turned 
back from pursuing them, to rest upon the nearer 
burning of the campaniles of Murano, and on the great 
city, where it magnified itself along the waves, as the 
quick silent pacing of the gondola drew nearer and 
nearer. And at last, when its walls were reached, and 
the outmost of its untrodden streets was entered, not 
through towered gate or guarded rampart, but as a 
deep inlet between two rocks of coral in the Indian sea ; 
when first upon the traveller's sight opened the long 
ranges of columned palaces, — each with its black boat 
moored at the portal, — each with its image cast down, 
beneath its feet, upon that green pavement which every 
breeze broke into new fantasies of rich tessellation; 
when first, at the extremity of the bright vista, the 
shadowy Rialto threw its colossal curve slowly forth 
from behind the palace of the Camerlenghi ; ^ that 
strange curve, so delicate, so adamantine, strong as a 
mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just bent; when 

^ The palace of the Camerlenghi, beside the Rialto, is a graceful 
work of the early Renaissance (1525) passing into Roman Renais- 
sance. [Adapted from Ruskin.J 



THE THRONE 141 

first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen, 
the gondolier's cry, "Ah! Stall," ^ struck sharp upon 
the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty 
cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the 
plash of the water followed close and loud, ringing 
along the marble by the boat's side ; and when at last 
that boat darted forth upon the breadth of silver sea, 
across which the front of the Ducal Palace, flushed w ith 
its sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady 
of Salvation,^ it was no marvel that the mind should be 
so deeply entranced by the visionary charm of a scene 
so beautiful and so strange, as to forget the darker 
truths of its history and its being. Well might it seem 
that such a city had owed her existence rather to the rod 
of the enchanter, than the fear of the fugitive ; that the 
waters which encircled her had been chosen for the 
mirror of her state, rather than the shelter of her naked- 
ness ; and that all which in nature was wild or merciless, 

— Time and Decay, as well as the waves and tempests, 

— had been won to adorn her instead of to destroy, and 
might still spare, for ages to come, that beauty which 
seemed to have fixed for its throne the sands of the 
hour-glass as well as of the sea. 

And although the last few eventful years, fraught 
with change to the face of the whole earth, have been 
more fatal in their influence on Venice than the five hun- 
dred that preceded them ; though the noble landscape 
of approach to her can now be seen no more, or seen 
only by a glance, as the engine slackens its rushing on 
the iron line ; and though many of her palaces are for 
ever defaced, and many in desecrated ruins, there is 
still so much of magic in her aspect, that the hurried 

^ Signifying approximately " Keep to the right." 
2 See note 1, p. 129. 



142 THE STONES OF VENICE 

traveller, who must leave her before the wonder of that 
first aspect has been worn away, may still be led to for- 
get the humility of her origin, and to shut his eyes to the 
depth of her desolation. They, at least, are little to be 
envied, in whose hearts the great charities of the 
imagination lie dead, and for whom the fancy has no 
power to repress the importunity of painful impressions, 
or to raise what is ignoble, and disguise what is dis- 
cordant, in a scene so rich in its remembrances, so sur- 
passing in its beauty. But for this work of the imagina- 
tion there must be no permission during the task which 
is before us. The impotent feelings of romance, so sin- 
gularly characteristic of this century, may indeed gild, 
but never save, the remains of those mightier ages to 
which they are attached like climbing flowers ; and they 
must be torn away from the magnificent fragments, if 
we would see them as they stood in their own strength. 
Those feelings, always as fruitless as they are fond, 
are in Venice not only incapable of protecting, but even 
of discerning, the objects to which they ought to have 
been attached. The Venice of modern fiction and 
drama is a thing of yesterday, a mere eflflorescence of 
decay, a stage dream which the first ray of daylight 
must dissipate into dust. No prisoner, whose name is 
worth remembering, or whose sorrow deserved sym- 
pathy, ever crossed that "Bridge of Sighs," which is 
the centre of the Byronic ideal of Venice;^ no great 
merchant of Venice ever saw that Rialto under which 
the traveller now passes with breathless interest: the 
statue which Byron makes Faliero address as of one of 
his great ancestors was erected to a soldier of fortune a 
hundred and fifty years after Faliero's death ; ^ and the 
most conspicuous parts of the city have been so entirely 

» ChUde Harold, 4. 1. ^ Marino Faliero, 3. 1. 22 ff. 



THE THRONE 143 

altered in the course of the last three centuries, that if 
Henry Dandolo or Francis Foscari ^ could be sum- 
moned from their tombs, and stood each on the deck 
of his galley at the entrance of the Grand Canal, that 
renowned entrance, the painter's favourite subject, the 
novelist's favourite scene, where the water first nar- 
rows by the steps of the Church of La Salute, — the 
mighty Doges would not know in what part of the 
world they stood, would literally not recognize one stone 
of the great city, for whose sake, and by whose ingrati- 
tude, their grey hairs had been brought down with bit- 
terness to the grave. The remains of their Venice lie 
hidden behind the cumbrous masses which were the 
delight of the nation in its dotage ; hidden in many a 
grass-grown court, and silent pathway, and lightless 
canal, where the slow waves have sapped their founda- 
tions for five hundred years, and must soon prevail over 
them for ever. It must be our task to glean and gather 
them forth, and restore out of them some faint image 
of the lost city ; more gorgeous a thousandfold than that 
which now exists, yet not created in the day-dream of 
the prince, nor by the ostentation of the noble, but 
built by iron hands and patient hearts, contending 
against the adversity of nature and the fury of man, 
so that its wonderfulness cannot be grasped by the 
indolence of imagination, but only after frank inquiry 
into the true nature of that wild and solitary scene, 
whose restless tides and trembling sands did indeed 
shelter the birth of the city, but long denied her do- 
minion. 

When the eye falls casually on a map of Europe, 
there is no feature by which it is more likely to be 

1 Dandolo [c. 1108-1205] and Foscari [1372-1457] were among 
the most famous of Venetian Doges. 



144 THE STONES OF VENICE 

arrested than the strange sweeping loop formed by the 
junction of the Alps and Apennines, and enclosing the 
great basin of Lombardy. This return of the mountain 
chain upon itself causes a vast difference in the charac- 
ter of the distribution of its debris on its opposite sides. 
The rock fragments and sediment which the torrents on 
the other side of the Alps bear into the plains are dis- 
tributed over a vast extent of country, and, though here 
and there lodged in beds of enormous thickness, soon 
permit the firm substrata to appear from underneath 
them; but all the torrents which descend from the 
southern side of the High Alps, and from the northern 
slope of the Apennines, meet concentrically in the re- 
cess or mountain bay which the two ridges enclose ; 
every fragment which thunder breaks out of their bat- 
tlements, and every grain of dust which the summer 
rain washes from their pastures, is at last laid at rest in 
the blue sweep of the Lombardic plain ; and that plain 
must have risen within its rocky barriers as a cup fills 
with wine, but for two contrary influences which con- 
tinually depress, or disperse from its surface, the accu- 
mulation of the ruins of ages. 

I will not tax the reader's faith in modern science by 
insisting on the singular depression of the surface of 
Lombardy, which appears for many centuries to have 
taken place steadily and continually ; the main fact with 
which we have to do is the gradual transport, by the Po 
and its great collateral rivers, of vast masses of the finer 
sediment to the sea. The character of the Lombardic 
plains is most strikingly expressed by the ancient walls 
of its cities, composed for the most part of large rounded 
Alpine pebbles alternating with narrow courses of 
brick; and was curiously illustrated in 1848, by the 
ramparts of these same pebbles thrown up four or five 



THE THRONE 145 

feet high round every field, to check the Austrian 
cavalry in the battle under the walls of Verona.^ The 
finer dust among which these pebbles are dispersed is 
taken up by the rivers, fed into continual strength by 
the Alpine snow, so that, however pure their \yaters may 
be when they issue from the lakes at the foot of the great 
chain, they become of the colour and opacity of clay 
before they reach the Adriatic ; the sediment which they 
bear is at once thrown down as they enter the sea, 
forming a vast belt of low land along the eastern coast of 
Italy. The powerful stream of the Po of course builds 
forward the fastest ; on each side of it, north and south, 
there is a tract of marsh, fed by more feeble streams, 
and less liable to rapid change than the delta of the 
central river. In one of these tracts is built Ravenna, 
and in the other Venice. 

What circumstances directed the peculiar arrange- 
ment of this great belt of sediment in the earliest times, 
it is not here the place to inquire. It is enough for us to 
know that from the mouths of the Adige to those of the 
Piave there stretches, at a variable distance of from 
three to five miles from the actual shore, a bank of 
sand, divided into long islands by narrow channels of 
sea. The space between this bank and the true shore 
consists of the sedimentary deposits from these and other 
rivers, a great plain of calcareous mud, covered, in the 
neighbourhood of Venice, by the sea at high water, to 
the depth in most places of a foot or a foot and a half, 
and nearly everywhere exposed at low tide, but divided 
by an intricate network of narrow and winding chan- 
nels, from which the sea never retires. In some places, 
according to the run of the currents, the land has risen 

^ In the battle of Custozza, 1848, the Aiistrians defeated the 
Piedmontese. 



146 THE STONES OF VENICE 

into marshy islets, consolidated, some by art, and some 
by time, into ground firm enough to be built upon, or 
fruitful enough to be cultivated : in others, on the con- 
trary, it has not reached the sea level ; so that, at the 
average low water, shallow lakelets glitter among its 
irregularly exposed fields of seaweed. In the midst of 
the largest of these, increased in importance by the con- 
fluence of several large river channels towards one of 
the openings in the sea bank, the city of Venice itself is 
built, on a crowded cluster of islands ; the various plots 
of higher ground which appear to the north and south 
of this central cluster, have at different periods been 
also thickly inhabited, and now bear, according to their 
size, the remains of cities, villages, or isolated convents 
and churches, scattered among spaces of open ground, 
partly waste and encumbered by ruins, partly under 
cultivation for the supply of the metropolis. 

The average rise and fall of the tide is about three 
feet (varying considerably with the seasons) ; but this 
fall, on so flat a shore, is enough to cause continual 
movement in the waters, and in the main canals to pro- 
duce a reflux which frequently runs like a mill stream. 
At high water no land is visible for many miles to the 
north or south of Venice, except in the form of small 
islands crowned with towers or gleaming with villages : 
there is a channel, some three miles wide, between the 
city and the mainland, and some mile and a half wide 
between it and the sandy breakwater called the Lido, 
which divides the lagoon from the Adriatic, but which 
is so low as hardly to disturb the impression of the city's 
having been built in the midst of the ocean, although 
the secret of its true position is partly, yet not painfully, 
betrayed by the clusters of piles set to mark the deep- 
water channels, which undulate far away in spotty 



THE THRONE 147 

chains like the studded backs of huge sea-snakes, and 
by the quick glittering of the crisped and crowded 
waves that flicker and dance before the strong winds 
upon the uplifted level of the shallow sea. But the scene 
is widely different at low tide. A fall of eighteen or 
twenty inches is enough to show ground over the greater 
part of the lagoon ; and at the complete ebb the city is 
seen standing in the midst of a dark plain of sea-weed, 
of gloomy green, except only where the larger branches 
of the Brenta and its associated streams converge 
towards the port of the Lido. Through this salt and 
sombre plain the gondola and the fishing-boat advance 
by tortuous channels, seldom more than four or five 
feet deep, and often so choked with slime that the 
heavier keels furrow the bottom till their crossing tracks 
are seen through the clear sea water like the ruts upon a 
wintry road, and the oar leaves blue gashes upon the 
ground at every stroke, or is entangled among the thick 
weed that fringes the banks with the weight of its sullen 
waves, leaning to and fro upon the uncertain sway of 
the exhausted tide. The scene is often profoundly 
oppressive, even at this day, when every plot of higher 
ground bears some fragment of fair building : but, in 
order to know what it was once, let the traveller follow 
in his boat at evening the windings of some unfre- 
quented channel far into the midst of the melancholy 
plain ; let him remove, in his imagination, the brightness 
of the great city that still extends itself in the distance, 
and the walls and towers from the islands that are near ; 
and so wait, until the bright investiture and sweet 
warmth of the sunset are withdrawn from the waters, 
and the black desert of their shore lies in its nakedness 
beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in 
dark languor and fearful silence, except where the salt 



148 THE STONES OF VENICE 

runlets plash into the tideless pools, or the sea-birds flit 
from their margins with a questioning cry ; and he will 
be enabled to enter in some sort into the horror of heart 
with which this solitude was anciently chosen by man 
for his habitation. They little thought, who first drove 
the stakes into the sand, and strewed the ocean reeds 
for their rest, that their children were to be the princes 
of that ocean, and their palaces its pride; and yet, in 
the great natural laws that rule that sorrowful wilder- 
ness, let it be remembered what strange preparation 
had been made for the things which no human imagina- 
tion could have foretold, and how the whole existence 
and fortune of the Venetian nation were anticipated or 
compelled, by the setting of those bars and doors to the 
rivers and the sea. Had deeper currents divided their 
islands, hostile navies would again and again have 
reduced the rising city into servitude; had stronger 
surges beaten their shores, all the richness and refine- 
ment of the Venetian architecture must have been 
exchanged for the walls and bulwarks of an ordinary 
sea-port. Had there been no tide, as in other parts of 
the Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would 
have become noisome, and the marsh in which it was 
built pestiferous. Had the tide been only a foot or 
eighteen inches higher in its rise, the water-access to 
the doors of the palaces would have been impossible : 
even as it is, there is sometimes a little difficulty, at the 
ebb, in landing without setting foot upon the lower and 
slippery steps; and the highest tides sometimes enter 
the courtyards, and overflow the entrance halls. Eigh- 
teen inches more of difference between the level of the 
flood and ebb would have rendered the doorsteps of 
every palace, at low water, a treacherous mass of weeds 
and limpets, and the entire system of water-carriage for 



THE THRONE 149 

the higher classes, in their easy and daily intercourse, 
must have been done away with. The streets of the city 
would have been widened, its network of canals filled 
up, and all the peculiar character of the place and the 
people destroyed. 

The reader may perhaps have felt some pain in the 
contrast between this faithful view of the site of the 
Venetian Throne, and the romantic conception of it 
which we ordinarily form; but this pain, if he have felt 
it, ought to be more than counterbalanced by the value 
of the instance thus afforded to us at once of the in- 
scrutableness and the wisdom of the ways of God. If, 
two thousand years ago, we had been permitted to 
watch the slow settling of the slime of those turbid 
rivers into the polluted sea, and the gaining upon its 
deep and fresh waters of the lifeless, impassable, unvoy- 
ageable plain, how little could we have understood the 
purpose with which those islands were shaped out of the 
void, and the torpid waters enclosed with their desolate 
walls of sand ! How little could we have known, any 
more than of what now seems to us most distressful, 
dark, and objectless, the glorious aim which was then 
in the mind of Him in whose hand are all the corners of 
the earth ! how little imagined that in the laws which 
were stretching forth the gloomy margins of those fruit- 
less banks, and feeding the bitter grass among their 
shallows, there was indeed a preparation, and the only 
preparation possible, for the founding of a city which 
was to be set like a golden clasp on the girdle of the 
earth, to write her history on the white scrolls of the 
sea-surges, and to word it in their thunder, and to 
gather and give forth, in world-wide pulsation, the glory 
of the West and of the East, from the burning heart of 
her Fortitude and Splendour. 



150 THE STONES OF VENICE 

ST. MARK'S 
Volume II, Chapter 4 

"And so Barnabas took Mark, and sailed unto 
Cyprus.'* If as the shores of Asia lessened upon his 
sight, the spirit of prophecy had entered into the heart 
of the weak disciple who had turned back when his 
hand was on the plough, and who had been judged, by 
the chiefest of Christ's captains, unworthy thencefor- 
ward to go forth with him to the work,^ how wonderful 
would he have thought it, that by the lion symbol in fu- 
ture ages he was to be represented among men ! how 
woful, that the war-cry of his name should so often 
reanimate the rage of the soldier, on those very plains 
where he himself had failed in the courage of the Chris- 
tian, and so often dye with fruitless blood that very 
Cypriot Sea, over whose waves, in repentance and 
shame, he was following the Son of Consolation ! 

That the Venetians possessed themselves of his body 
in the ninth century, there appears no sufficient reason 
to doubt, nor that it was principally in consequence 
of their having done so, that they chose him for their 
patron saint. There exists, however, a tradition that 
before he went into Egypt he had founded the church 
at Aquileia, and was thus in some sort the first bishop 
of the Venetian isles and people. I believe that this 
tradition stands on nearly as good grounds as that of 
St. Peter having been the first bishop of Rome ^ ; but, as 
usual, it is enriched by various later additions and em- 

1 Ads xiii, 13 and xv, 38, 39. [Ruskin.] 

2 The reader who desires to investigate it may consult Galliciolli. 
Delle Memorie Venete (Venice, 1795), torn. 2, p. 332, and the au- 
thorities quoted by him. [Ruskin.] 



ST. MARK'S 151 

bellishments, much resembling the stories told respect- 
ing the church of Murano. Thus we find it recorded by 
the Santo Padre who compiled the Vite de' Santi spet- 
tanti alle Chiese di Venezia,^ that "St. Mark having 
seen the people of Aquileia well grounded in religion, 
and being called to Rome by St. Peter, before setting off 
took with him the holy bishop Hermagoras, and went 
in a small boat to the marshes of Venice. There were at 
that period some houses built upon a certain high bank 
called Rialto, and the boat being driven by the wind 
was anchored in a marshy place, when St. Mark, 
snatched into ecstasy, heard the voice of an angel say- 
ing to him : ' Peace be to thee, Mark ; here shall thy 
body rest.' " The angel goes on to foretell the building 
of " una stupenda, ne piu veduta Citta" ^ ; but the fable 
is hardly ingenious enough to deserve farther relation. 
But whether St. Mark was first bishop of Aquileia or 
not, St. Theodore was the first patron of the city ; nor 
can he yet be considered as having entirely abdicated 
his early right, as his statue, standing on a crocodile, 
still companions the winged lion on the opposing pillar 
of the piazzetta. A church erected to this Saint is said 
to have occupied, before the ninth century, the site of 
St. Mark's ; and the traveller, dazzled by the brilliancy 
of the great square, ought not to leave it without en- 
deavouring to imagine its aspect in that early time, 
when it was a green field cloister-like and quiet,^ divided 
by a small canal, with a line of trees on each side ; and 
extending between the two churches of St. Theodore 

^ Venice, 1761, torn. 1, p. 126. [Ruskin.] 

2 A wonderful City, such as was never seen before. 

3 St. Mark's Place, "partly covered by turf, and planted with a 
few trees; and on account of its pleasant aspect called Brollo or 
Brofflio, that is to say. Garden." The canal passed throuo^h it, over 
which is built the bridge of the Malpassi. GallicioUi, lib. i, cap. 
viii. [Ruskin.] 



152 THE STONES OF VENICE 

and St. Gemanium, as the little piazza of Torcello lies 
between its "palazzo" and cathedral. 

But in the year 813, when the seat of government was 
finally removed to the Rialto, a Ducal Palace, built on 
the spot where the present one stands, with a Ducal 
Chapel beside it,^ gave a very different character to the 
Square of St. Mark ; and fifteen years later, the acquisi- 
tion of the body of the Saint, and its deposition in the 
Ducal Chapel, perhaps not yet completed, occasioned 
the investiture of that chapel with all possible splen- 
dour. St. Theodore was deposed from his patronship, 
and his church destroyed, to make room for the ag- 
grandizement of the one attached to the Ducal Palace, 
and thenceforward known as " St. Mark's." ^ 

This first church was however destroyed by fire, 
when the Ducal Palace was burned in the revolt against 
Candiano, in 976. It was partly rebuilt by his successor, 
Pietro Orseolo, on a larger scale; and, with the assist- 
ance of Byzantine architects, the fabric was carried on 
under successive Doges for nearly a hundred years ; the 
main building being completed in 1071, but its incrusta- 
tion with marble not till considerably later. It was con- 
secrated on the 8th of October, 1085,^ according to 
Sansovino and the author of the Chiesa Ducale di S. 
Marco, in 1094 according to Lazari, but certainly 

^ My authorities for this statement are given below, in the chapter 
on the Ducal Palace. [Ruskin.] 

2 In the Chronicles, Sancti Marci Ducalis Cappella. [Ruskin.] 
^ "To God the Lord, the glorious Virgin Annunciate, and the 
Protector St. Mark." — Corner, p. 14. It is needless to trouble the 
reader with the various authorities for the above statements : I have 
consulted the best. The previous inscription once existing on the 
church itself: 

Anno milleno transacto bisque trigeno 
Desuper undecirao fuit facta primo, 

is no longer to be seen, and is conjectured by Corner, with much 
probability, to have perished " in qualche ristauro." [Ruskin.] 



ST. MARK'S 153 

between 1084 and 1096, those years being the limits 
of the reign of Vital Falier ; I incHne to the supposition 
that it was soon after his accession to the throne in 
1085, though Sansovino writes, by mistake, Ordelafo 
instead of Vital Falier. But, at all events, before the 
close of the eleventh century the great consecration of 
the church took place. It was again injured by fire in 
1106, but repaired; and from that time to the fall of 
Venice there was probably no Doge who did not in 
some slip'ht dea^ree embellish or alter the fabric, so that 
few parts of it can be pronounced boldly to be of any 
given date. Two periods of interference are, however, 
notable above the rest : the first, that in which the Gothic 
school had superseded the Byzantine towards the close 
of the fourteenth century, when the pinnacles, upper 
archivolts, and window traceries were added to the 
exterior, and the great screen with various chapels and 
tabernacle- work, to the interior; the second, when the 
Renaissance school superseded the Gothic, and the 
pupils of Titian and Tintoret substituted, over one half 
of the church, their own compositions for the Greek 
mosaics with which it was originally decorated ; ^ hap- 
pily, though with no good will, having left enough to 
enable us to imagine and lament what they destroyed. 
Of this irreparable loss we shall have more to say here- 
after ; meantime, I wish only to fix in the reader's mind 
the succession of periods of alterations as firmly and 
simply as possible. 

We have seen that the main body of the church may 
be broadly stated to be of the eleventh century, the 
Gothic additions of the fourteenth, and the restored 
mosaics of the seventeenth. There is no difficulty in 
distinguishing at a glance the Gothic portions from the 

* Signed Bartolomeus Bozza, 1634, 1647, 1656, etc. [Ruskin.] 



154 THE STONES OF VENICE 

Byzantine ; but there is considerable difficulty in ascer- 
taining how long, during the course of the twelfth and 
thirteenth centuries, additions were made to the Byzan- 
tine church, which cannot be easily distinguished from 
the work of the eleventh century, being purposely exe- 
cuted in the same manner. Two of the most important 
pieces of evidence on this point are, a mosaic in the 
south transept, and another over the northern door of 
the fa9ade; the first representing the interior, the 
second the exterior, of the ancient church. 

It has just been stated that the existing building was 
consecrated by the Doge Vital Falier. A peculiar so- 
lemnity was given to that act of consecration, in the 
minds of the Venetian people, by what appears to have 
been one of the best arranged and most successful im- 
postures ever attempted by the clergy of the Romish 
church. The body of St. Mark had, without doubt, 
perished in the conflagration of 976 ; but the revenues 
of the church depended too much upon the devotion 
excited by these relics to permit the confession of their 
loss. The following is the account given by Corner, 
and believed to this day by the Venetians, of the pre- 
tended miracle by which it was concealed. 

" After the repairs undertaken by the Doge Orseolo, 
the place in which the body of the holy Evangelist rested 
had been altogether forgotten ; so that the Doge Vital 
Falier was entirely ignorant of the place of the venerable 
deposit. This was no light affliction, not only to the 
pious Doge, but to all the citizens and people ; so that 
at last, moved by confidence in the Divine mercy, they 
determined to implore, with prayer and fasting, the 
manifestation of so great a treasure, which did not now 
depend upon any human effort. A general fast being 
therefore proclaimed, and a solemn procession ap- 



ST. MARK'S 155 

pointed for the 25th day of June, while the people 
assembled in the church interceded with God in fervent 
prayers for the desired boon, they beheld, with as much 
amazement as joy, a slight shaking in the marbles of a 
pillar (near the place where the altar of the Cross is 
now), which, presently falling to the earth, exposed to 
the view of the rejoicing people the chest of bronze in 
which the body of the Evangelist was laid." 

Of the main facts of this tale there is no doubt. They 
were embellished afterwards, as usual, by many fanci- 
ful traditions ; as, for instance, that, when the sarcoph- 
agus was discovered, St. Mark extended his hand out 
of it, with a gold ring on one of the fingers, which he 
permitted a noble of the Dolfin family to remove ; and 
a quaint and delightful story was further invented of this 
ring, which I shall not repeat here, as it is now as well 
known as any tale of the Arabian Nights. But the fast 
and the discovery of the cofiin, by whatever means 
effected, are facts ; and they are recorded in one of the 
best-preserved mosaics of the north ^ transept, exe- 
cuted very certainly not long after the event had taken 
place, closely resembling in its treatment that of the 
Bayeux tapestry, and showing, in a conventional man- 
ner, the interior of the church, as it then was, filled by 
the people, first in prayer, then in thanksgiving, the 
pillar standing open before them, and the Doge, in the 
midst of them, distinguished by his crimson bonnet 
embroidered with gold, but more unmistakably by the 
inscription "Dux" over his head, as uniformly is the 
case in the Bayeux tapestry, and most other pictorial 
works of the period. The church is, of course, rudely 
represented, and the two upper stories of it reduced to 

^ An obvious slip. The mosaic is on the west wall of the south 
transept. [Cook and Wedderburn.] 



156 THE STONES OF VENICE 

a small scale in order to form a background to the fig- 
ures ; one of those bold pieces of picture history which 
we in our pride of perspective, and a thousand things 
besides, never dare attempt. We should have put in a 
column or two, of the real or perspective size, and sub- 
dued it into a vague background : the old workman 
crushed the church together that he might get it all 
in, up to the cupolas ; and has, therefore, left us some 
useful notes of its ancient form, though any one who 
is familiar with the method of drawing employed at 
the period will not push the evidence too far. The two 
pulpits are there, however, as they are at this day, and 
the fringe of mosaic flowerwork which then encom- 
passed the whole church, but which modern restorers 
have destroyed, all but one fragment still left in the 
south aisle. There is no attempt to represent the other 
mosaics on the roof, the scale being too small to admit 
of their being represented with any success ; but some 
at least of those mosaics had been executed at that 
period, and their absence in the representation of the 
entire church is especially to be observed, in order to 
show that we must not trust to any negative evidence 
in such works. M. Lazari has rashly concluded that 
the central archivolt of St. Mark's must be posterior to 
the year 1205, because it does not appear in the repre- 
sentation of the exterior of the church over the northern 
door; ^ but he justly observes that this mosaic (which 
is the other piece of evidence we possess respecting 
the ancient form of the building) cannot itself be ear- 
lier than 1205, since it represents the bronze horses 
which were brought from Constantinople in that year. 
And this one fact renders it very difficult to speak with 
confidence respecting the date of any part of the exte- 
' Guida di Venezia, p. 6. [Ruskin.] 



k 



ST. MARK'S 157 

rior of St. Mark's ; for we have above seen that it was 
consecrated in the eleventh century, and yet here is one 
of its most important exterior decorations assuredly 
retouched, if not entirely added, in the thirteenth, al- 
though its style would have led us to suppose it had been 
an original part of the fabric. However, for all our pur- 
poses, it will be enough for the reader to remember that 
the earliest parts of the building belong to the eleventh, 
twelfth, and first part of the thirteenth century ; the 
Gothic portions to the fourteenth ; some of the altars 
and embellishments to the fifteenth and sixteenth ; and 
the modern portion of the mosaics to the seventeenth. 

This, however, I only wish him to recollect in order 
that I may speak generally of the Byzantine architec- 
ture of St. Mark's, without leading him to suppose the 
whole church to have been built and decorated by 
Greek artists. Its later portions, with the single excep- 
tion of the seventeenth-century mosaics, have been so 
dexterously accommodated to the original fabric that 
the general effect is still that of a Byzantine building ; 
and I shall not, except when it is absolutely necessary, 
direct attention to the discordant points, or weary the 
reader with anatomical criticism. Whatever in St. 
Mark's arrests the eye, or affects the feelings, is either 
Byzantine, or has been modified by Byzantine influ- 
ence; and our inquiry into its architectural merits 
need not therefore be disturbed by the anxieties of anti- 
quarianism, or arrested by the obscurities of chrono- 
logy. 

And now I wish that the reader, before I bring him 
into St. Mark's Place, would imagine himself for a little 
time in a quiet English cathedral town, and walk with 
me to the west front of its cathedral. Let us go together 
up the more retired street, at the end of which we can 



15« THE STONES OF VENICE 

see the pinnacles of one of the towers, and then through 
the low grey gateway, with its battlemented top and 
small latticed window in the centre, into the inner 
private-looking road or close, where nothing goes in 
but the carts of the tradesmen who supply the bishop 
and the chapter, and where there are little shaven grass- 
plots, fenced in by neat rails, before old-fashioned 
groups of somewhat diminutive and excessively trim 
houses, with little oriel and bay windows jutting out 
here and there, and deep wooden cornices and eaves 
painted cream colour and white, and small porches 
to their doors in the shape of cockle-shells, or little, 
crooked, thick, indescribable wooden gables warped 
a little on one side; and so forward till we come to 
larger houses, also old-fashioned, but of red brick, and 
with gardens behind them, and fruit walls, which show 
here and there, among the nectarines, the vestiges of 
an old cloister arch or shaft, and looking in front on 
the cathedral square itself, laid out in rigid divisions 
of smooth grass and gravel walk, yet not uncheerful, 
especially on the sunny side, where the canons' chil- 
dren are walking with their nursery-maids. And so, 
taking care not to tread on the grass, we will go along 
the straight walk to the west front, and there stand 
for a time, looking up at its deep-pointed porches and 
the dark places between their pillars where there were 
statues once, and where the fragments, here and there, 
of a stately figure are still left, which has in it the like- 
ness of a king, perhaps indeed a king on earth, per- 
haps a saintly king long ago in heaven ; and so higher 
and higher up to the great mouldering wall of rugged 
sculpture and confused arcades, shattered, and grey, 
and grisly with heads of dragons and mocking fiends, 
worn by the rain and swirling winds into yet unseem- 



ST. MARK'S 159 

Her shape, and coloured on their stony scales by the 
deep russet-orange lichen, melancholy gold; and so, 
higher still, to the bleak towers, so far above that the 
eye lose? itself among the bosses of their traceries, 
though they are rude and strong, and only sees like a 
drift of eddying black points, now closing, now scatter- 
ing, and now settling suddenly into invisible places 
among the bosses and flowers, the crowd of restless 
birds that fill the whole square with that strange clan- 
gour of theirs, so harsh and yet so soothing, like the 
cries of birds on a solitary coast between the cliffs 
and sea. 

Think for a little while of that scene, and the mean- 
ing of all its small formalisms, mixed with its sej-ene 
sublimity. Estimate its secluded, continuous, drowsy 
felicities, and its evidence of the sense and steady 
performance of such kind of duties as can be regulated 
by the cathedral clock ; and weigh the influence of those 
dark towers on all who have passed through the lonely 
square at their feet for centuries, and on all who have 
seen them rising far away over the wooded plain, or 
catching on their square masses the last rays of the 
sunset, when the city at their feet was indicated only 
by the mist at the bend of the river. And then let us 
quickly recollect that we are in Venice, and land at 
the extremity of the Calla Lunga San Moise, which 
may be considered as there answering to the secluded 
street that led us to our English cathedral gateway. 

We find ourselves in a paved alley, some seven feet 
wide where it is widest, full of people, and resonant 
with cries of itinerant salesmen, — a shriek in their 
beginning, and dying away into a kind of brazen ring- 
ing, all the worse for its confinement between the high 
houses of the passage along which we have to make our 



160 THE STONES OF VENICE 

way. Over-head, an inextricable confusion of rugged 
shutters, and iron balconies and chimney flues, pushed 
out on brackets to save room, and arched windows 
with projecting sills of Istrian stone, and gleams of 
green leaves here and there where a fig-tree branch 
escapes over a lower wall from some inner cortile, lead- 
ing the eye up to the narrow stream of blue sky high 
over all. On each side, a row of shops, as densely set as 
may be, occupying, in fact, intervals between the square 
stone shafts, about eight feet high, which carry the first 
floors : intervals of which one is narrow and serves as a 
door ; the other is, in the more respectable shops, wain- 
scotted to the height of the counter and glazed above, 
but jn those of the poorer tradesmen left open to the 
ground, and the wares laid on benches and tables in the 
open air, the light in all cases entering at the front only, 
and fading away in a few feet from the threshold into a 
gloom which the eye from without cannot penetrate, 
but which is generally broken by a ray or two from a 
feeble lamp at the back of the shop, suspended before a 
print of the Virgin. The less pious shopkeeper some- 
times leaves his lamp unlighted, and is contented with 
a penny print ; the more religious one has his print col- 
oured and set in a little shrine with a gilded or figured 
fringe, with perhaps a faded flower or two on each side, 
and his lamp burning brilliantly. Here, at the fruiter- 
er's, where the dark-green water-melons are heaped 
upon the counter like cannon balls, the Madonna has a 
tabernacle of fresh laurel leaves ; but the pewterer next 
door has let his lamp out, and there is nothing to be seen 
in his shop but the dull gleam of the studded patterns 
on the copper pans, hanging from his roof in the dark- 
ness. Next comes a " Vendita Frittole e Liquori,'* * 
^ Fritters and liquors for sale. 



ST. MARK'S 161 

where the Virgin, enthroned in a very humble manner 
beside a tallow candle on a back shelf, presides over 
certain ambrosial morsels of a nature too ambiguous to 
be defined or enumerated. But a few steps farther on, 
at the regular wine-shop of the calle, where we are of- 
ferred "Vino Nostrani a Soldi 28-32," the Madonna is 
in great glory, enthroned above ten or a dozen large red 
casks of three-year-old vintage, and flanked by goodly 
ranks of bottles of Maraschino, and two crimson lamps ; 
and for the evening, when the gondoliers will come to 
drink out, under her auspices, the money they have 
gained during the day, she will have a whole chandelier. 
A yard or two farther, we pass the hostelry of the 
Black Eagle, and, glancing as we pass through the 
square door of marble, deeply moulded, in the oUter 
wall, we see the shadows of its pergola of vines resting 
on an ancient well, with a pointed shield carved on its 
side ; and so presently emerge on the bridge and Campo 
San Moise, whence to the entrance into St. Mark's 
Place, called the Bocca di Piazza (mouth of the square), 
the Venetian character is nearly destroyed, first by the 
frightful fa9ade of San Moise, which we will pause at 
another time to examine, and then by the modernizing 
of the shops as they near the piazza, and the mingling 
with the lower Venetian populace of lounging groups 
of English and Austrians. We will push fast through 
them into the shadow of the pillars at the end of the 
" Bocca di Piazza," and then we forget them all ; for 
between those pillars there opens a great light, and, in 
the midst of it, as we advance slowly, the vast tower of 
St. Mark seems to lift itself visibly forth from the level 
field of chequered stones ; and, on each side, the count- 
less arches prolong themselves into ranged symmetry, 
as if the rugged and irregular houses that pressed to- 



162 THE STONES OF VENICE 

gether above us in the dark alley had been struck back 
into sudden obedience and lovely order, and all their 
rude casements and broken walls had been transformed 
kito arches charged with goodly sculpture, and fluted 
shafts of delicate stone. 

And well may they fall back, for beyond those troops 
of ordered arches there rises a vision out of the earth, 
and all the great square seems to have opened from it in 
a kind of awe, that we may see it far away ; — a multi- 
tude of pillars and white domes, clustered into a long 
low pyramid of coloured light ; a treasure-heap, it seems, 
partly of gold, and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, 
hollowed beneath into five great vaulted porches, ceiled 
with fair mosaic, and beset with sculpture of alabaster, 
clear as amber and delicate as ivory, — sculpture fan- 
tastic and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and 
grapes and pomegranates, and birds clinging and flut- 
tering among the branches, all twined together into an 
endless network of buds and plumes ; and, in the midst 
of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and robed to 
the feet, and leaning to each other across the gates, their 
figures indistinct among the gleaming of the golden 
ground through the leaves beside them, interrupted and 
dim, like the morning light as it faded back among the 
branches of Eden, when first its gates were angel- 
guarded long ago. And round the walls of the porches 
there are set pillars of variegated stones, jasper and 
porphyry, and deep-green serpentine spotted with 
flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse and half 
yield to the sunshine, Cleopatra-like, " their bluest veins 
to kiss" ^ — the shadow, as it steals back from them, 
revealing line after line of azure undulation, as a reced- 
ing tide leaves the waved sand ; their capitals rich with 
^ Antony and Cleopatra, 2. 5. 29. 







ST. mark's : CENTRAL ARCH OF FACADE 



ST. MARK'S 163 

interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drift- 
ing leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all 
beginning and ending in the Cross ; and above them, in 
\the broad archivolts, a continuous chain of language 
{tnd of life — angels, and the signs of heaven, and the 
J; ibours of men, each in its appointed season upon the 
evarth; and above these, another range of glittering 
pinnacles, mixed with white arches edged with scarlet 
flowers, — a confusion of delight, amidst which the 
breasts of the Greek horses are seen blazing in their 
breadth of golden strength, and the St. Mark's Lion, 
lifted on a blue field covered with stars, until at last, as 
if in ecstasy, the crests of the arches break into a mar- 
ble foam, and toss themselves far into the blue sky in 
flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the 
breakers on the Lido shore had been frost-bound before 
they fell, and the sea-nymphs had inlaid them with 
coral and amethyst. 

Between that grim cathedral of England and this, 
what an interval ! There is a type of it in the very birds 
that haunt them; for, instead of the restless crowd, 
hoarse-voiced and sable-winged, drifting on the bleak 
upper air, the St. Mark's porches are full of doves, that 
nestle among the marble foliage, and mingle the soft 
iridescence of their living plumes, changing at every 
motion, with the tints, hardly less lovely, that have 
stood unchanged for seven hundred years. 

And what effect has this splendour on those who pass 
beneath it ? You may walk from sunrise to sunset, to 
and fro, before the gateway of St. Mark's, and you will 
not see an eye lifted to it, nor a countenance brightened 
by it. Priest and layman, soldier and civilian, rich and 
poor, pass by it alike regardlessly. Up to the very re- 
cesses of the porches, the meanest tradesmen of the city 



164 THE STONES OF VENICE 

push their counters ; nay, the foundations of its pillars / 
are themselves the seats — not " of them that sell / 
doves" ^ for sacrifice, but of the vendors of toys and 
caricatures. Round the whole square in front of the 
church there is almost a continuous line of cafes, when* 
the idle Venetians of the middle classes lounge, and read 
empty journals ; in its centre the Austrian bands pla^v 
during the time of vespers, their martial music jarring 
with the organ notes, — the march drowning the mise- 
rere, and the sullen crowd thickening round them, — 
a crowd, which, if it had its will, would stiletto every 
soldier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of the 
porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes, 
unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like 
lizards ; and unregarded children, — every heavy glance 
of their young eyes full of desperation and stony 
depravity, and their throats hoarse with cursing, — 
gamble, and fight, and snarl, and sleep, hour after 
hour, clashing their bruised centesimi upon the marble 
ledges of the church porch. And the images of Christ 
and His angels look down upon it continually. 



CHARACTERISTICS OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 
Volume II, Chapter 6 

I BELIEVE, then, that the characteristic or moral ele- 
ments of Gothic are the following, placed in the order of 
their importance : 

1. Savageness. 4. Grotesqueness. 

2. Changefulness. 5, Rigidity. 

3. Naturalism 6. Redundance. 

* Matthew xxi, 12 and John n, 16. 



GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 165 

These characters are here expressed as belonging to 
the building ; as belonging to the builder, they would be 
expressed thus: — 1. Savageness, or Rudeness. 2. 
Love of Change. 3. Love of Nature. 4. Disturbed 
Imagination. 5. Obstinacy. 6. Generosity. And I 
repeat, that the withdrawal of any one, or any two, will 
not at once destroy the Gothic character of a building, 
but the removal of a majority of them will. I shall pro- 
ceed to examine them in their order. 

1. Savageness. I am not sure when the word 
"Gothic" was first generically applied to the architec- 
ture of the North ; but I presume that, whatever the 
date of its original usage, it was intended to imply re- 
proach, and express the barbaric character of the na- 
tions among whom that architecture arose. It never 
implied that they were literally of Gothic lineage, far 
less that their architecture had been originally invented 
by the Goths themselves; but it did imply that they 
and their buildings together exhibited a degree of stern- 
ness and rudeness, which, in contradistinction to the 
character of Southern and Eastern nations, appeared 
like a perpetual reflection of the contrast between the 
Goth and the Roman in their first encounter. And 
when that fallen Roman, in the utmost impotence of 
his luxury, and insolence of his guilt, became the model 
for the imitation of civilized Europe, at the close of the 
so-called Dark Ages, the word Gothic became a term 
of unmitigated contempt, not unmixed with aversion. 
From that contempt, by the exertion of the antiquaries 
and architects of this century, Gothic architecture has 
been sufficiently vindicated ; and perhaps some among 
us, in our admiration of the magnificent science of its 
structure, and sacredness of its expression, might de- 
sire that the term of ancient reproach should be with- 



166 THE STOiNES OF VENICE 

drawn, and some other, of more apparent honourable- 
ness, adopted in its place. There is no chance, as there 
is no need, of such a substitution. As far as the epithet 
was used scornfully, it was used falsely ; but there is no 
reproach in the word, rightly understood ; on the con- 
trary, there is a profound truth, which the instinct of 
mankind almost unconsciously recognizes. It is true, 
greatly and deeply true, that the architecture of the 
North is rude and wild ; but it is not true, that, for this 
reason, we are to condemn it, or despise. Far other- 
wise : I believe it is in this very character that it deserves 
our profoundest reverence. 

The charts of the world which have been drawn up 
by modern science have thrown into a narrow space 
the expression of a vast amount of knowledge, but I 
have never yet seen any one pictorial enough to enable 
the spectator to imagine the kind of contrast in physical 
character which exists between Northern and Southern 
countries. We know the differences in detail, but we 
have not that broad glance and grasp which would en- 
able us to feel them in their fulness. We know that 
gentians grow on the Alps, and olives on the Apen- 
nines; but we do not enough conceive for ourselves 
that variegated mosaic of the world's surface which a 
bird sees in its migration, that difference between the 
district of the gentian and of the olive which the stork 
and the swallow see far off, as they lean upon the sirocco 
wind. Let us, for a moment, try to raise ourselves even 
above the level of their flight, and imagine the Medi- 
terranean lying beneath us like an irregular lake, and 
all its ancient promontories sleeping in the sun : here 
and there an angry spot of thunder, a grey stain of 
storm, moving upon the burning field ; and here and 
there a fixed wreath of white volcano smoke, sur- 



GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 167 

rounded by its circle of ashes ; but for the most part a 
great peacefulness of Hght, Syria and Greece, Italy and 
Spain, laid like pieces of a golden pavement into the 
sea-blue, chased, as we stoop nearer to them, with 
bossy beaten work of mountain chains, and glowing 
softly with terraced gardens, and flowers heavy with 
frankincense, mixed among masses of laurel, and 
orange, and plumy palm, that abate with their grey- 
green shadows the burning of the marble rocks, and of 
the ledges of porphyry sloping under lucent sand. Then 
let us pass farther towards the north, until we see the 
orient colours change gradually into a vast belt of rainy 
green, where the pastures of Switzerland, and poplar 
valleys of France, and dark forests of the Danube and 
Carpathians stretch from the mouths of the Loire to 
those of the Volga, seen through clefts in grey swirls of 
rain-cloud and flaky veils of the mist of the brooks, 
spreading low along the pasture lands: and then, far- 
ther north still, to see the earth heave into mighty 
masses of leaden rock and heathy moor, bordering with 
a broad waste of gloomy purple that belt of field and 
wood, and splintering into irregular and grisly islands 
amidst the northern seas, beaten by storm, and chilled 
by ice-drift, and tormented by furious pulses of con- 
tending tide, until the roots of the last forests fail from 
among the hill ravines, and the hunger of the north 
wind bites their peaks into barrenness; and, at last, 
the wall of ice, durable like iron, sets, deathlike, its white 
teeth against us out of the polar twilight. And, having 
once traversed in thought this gradation of the zoned 
iris of the earth in all its material vastness, let us go 
down nearer to it, and watch the parallel change in the 
belt of animal life ; the multitudes of swift and brilliant 
creatures that glance in the air and sea, or tread the 



168 THE STONES OF VENICE 

sands of the southern zone ; striped zebras and spotted 
leopards, glistening serpents, and birds arrayed in 
purple and scarlet. Let us contrast their delicacy and 
brilliancy of colour, and swiftness of motion, with the 
frost-cramped strength, and shaggy covering, and 
dusky plumage of the northern tribes; contrast the 
Arabian horse with the Shetland, the tiger and leopard 
with the wolf and bear, the antelope with the elk, the 
bird of paradise with the osprey: and then, submis- 
sively acknowledging the great laws by which the earth 
and all that it bears are ruled throughout their being, 
let us not condemn, but rejoice in the expression by 
man of his own rest in the statutes of the lands that 
gave him birth. Let us watch him with reverence as he 
sets side by side the burning gems, and smooths with 
soft sculpture the jasper pillars, that are to reflect a 
ceaseless sunshine, and rise into a cloudless sky: but 
not with less reverence let us stand by him, when, with 
rough strength and hurried stroke, he smites an un- 
couth animation out of the rocks which he has torn 
from among the moss of the moorland, and heaves into 
the darkened air the pile of iron buttress and rugged 
wall, instinct with work of an imagination as wild and 
wayward as the northern sea; creations of ungainly 
shape and rigid limb, but full of wolfish life ; fierce as 
the winds that beat, and changeful as the clouds that 
shade them. 

There is, I repeat, no degradation, no reproach in 
this, but all dignity and honourableness : and we should 
err grievously in refusing either to recognize as an 
essential character of the existing architecture of the 
North, or to admit as a desirable character in that 
which it yet may be, this wildness of thought, and 
roughness of work ; this look of mountain brotherhood 



GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 169 

between the cathedral and the Alp; this magnificence 
of sturdy power, put forth only the more energetically 
because the fine finger-touch was chilled away by the 
frosty wind, and the eye dimmed by the moor-mist, or 
blinded by the hail ; this outspeaking of the strong spirit 
of men who may not gather redundant fruitage from 
the earth, nor bask in dreamy benignity of sunshine, 
but must break the rock for bread, and cleave the forest 
for fire, and show, even in what they did for their de- 
light, some of the hard habits of the arm and heart that 
grew on them as they swung the axe or pressed the 
plough. 

If, however, the savagetiess of Gothic architecture, 
merely as an expression of its origin among Northern 
nations, may be considered, in some sort, a noble char- 
acter, it possesses a higher nobility still, when con- 
sidered as an index, not of climate, but of religious 
principle. 

In the 13th and 14th paragraphs of Chapter XXI. of 
the first volume of this work, it was noticed that the 
systems of architectural ornament, properly so called, 
might be divided into three: — 1. Servile ornament, 
in which the execution or power of the inferior work- 
man is entirely subjected to the intellect of the higher ; 

— 2. Constitutional ornament, in which the executive 
inferior power is, to a certain point, emancipated and 
independent, having a will of its own, yet confessing its 
inferiority and rendering obedience to higher powers ; 

— and 3. Revolutionary ornament, in which no ex- 
ecutive inferiority is admitted at all. I must here ex- 
plain the nature of these divisions at somewhat greater 
length. 

Of Servile ornament, the principal schools are the 
Greek, Ninevite, and Egyptian; but their servility is 



170 THE STONES OF VENICE 

of different kinds. The Greek master-workman was 
far advanced in knowledge and power above the As- 
syrian or Egyptian. Neither he nor those for whom he 
worked could endure the appearance of imperfection 
in anything; and, therefore, what ornament he ap- 
pointed to be done by those beneath him was com- 
posed of mere geometrical forms, — balls, ridges, and 
perfectly symmetrical foliage, — which could be ex- 
ecuted with absolute precision by line and rule, and 
were as perfect in their way, when completed, as his 
own figure sculpture. The Assyrian and Egyptian, on 
the contrary, less cognizant of accurate form in any- 
thing, were content to allo\^ their figure sculpture to 
be executed by inferior workmen, but lowered the 
method of its treatment to a standard which every 
workman could reach, and then trained him by dis- 
cipline so rigid, that there was no chance of his falling 
beneath the standard appointed. The Greek gave to 
the lower workman no subject which he could not per- 
fectly execute. The Assyrian gave him subjects which 
he could only execute imperfectly, but fixed a legal 
standard for his imperfection. The workman was, in 
both systems, a slave. ^ 

But in the mediaeval, or especially Christian, system 
of ornament, this slavery is done away with altogether ; 
Christianity having recognized, in small things as well 
as great, the individual value of every soul. But it not 

^ The third kind of ornainent, the Renaissance, is that in which 
the inferior detail becomes principal, the executor of every minor 
portion being required to exhibit skill and possess knowledge as great 
as that which is possessed by the master of the design ; and in the 
endeavour to endow him with this skill and knowledge, his own 
original power is overwhelmed, and the whole building becomes a 
wearisome exhibition of well-educated imbecility. We must fully 
inquire into the nature of this form of error, when we arrive at the 
examination of the Renaissance schools. [Ruskin.] 



GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 171 

only recognizes its value; it confesses its imperfection, 
in only bestowing dignity upon the acknowledgment 
of unworthiness. That admission of lost power and 
fallen nature, which the Greek or Ninevite felt to be 
intensely painful, and, as far as might be, altogether 
refused, the Christian makes daily and hourly con- 
templating the fact of it without fear, as tending, in the 
end, to God's greater glory. Therefore, to every spirit 
which Christianity summons to her service, her ex- 
hortation is: Do what you can, and confess frankly 
what you are unable to do ; neither let your effort be 
shortened for fear of failure, nor your confession si- 
lenced for fear of shame. And it is, perhaps, the prin- 
cipal admirableness of the Gothic schools of architec- 
ture, that they thus receive the results of the labour of 
inferior minds ; and out of fragments full of imperfec- 
tion, and betraying that imperfection in every touch, 
indulgently raise up a stately and unaccusable whole. 
But the modern English mind has this much in com- 
mon with that of the Greek, that it intensely desires, 
in all things, the utmost completion or perfection com- 
patible with their nature. This is a noble character in 
the abstract, but becomes ignoble when it causes us to 
forget the relative dignities of that nature itself, and to 
prefer the perfectness of the lower nature to the imper- 
fection of the higher; not considering that as, judged 
by such a rule, all the brute animals would be prefer- 
able to man, because more perfect in their functions 
and kind, and yet are always held inferior to him, so 
also in the works of man, those which are more perfect 
in their kind are always inferior to those which are, in 
their nature, liable to more faults and shortcomings. 
For the finer the nature, the more flaws it will show 
through the clearness of it ; and it is a law of this uni- 



172 THE STONES OF VENICE 

verse, that the best things shall be seldomest seen in 
their best form. The wild grass grows well and strongly, 
one year with another; but the wheat is, according to 
the greater nobleness of its nature, liable to the bitterer 
blight. And therefore, while in all things that we see 
or do, we are to desire perfection, and strive for it, we 
are nevertheless not to set the meaner thing, in its nar- 
row accomplishment, above the nobler thing, in its 
mighty progress; not to esteem smooth minuteness 
above shattered majesty ; not to prefer mean victory to 
honourable defeat; not to lower the level of our aim, 
that we may the more surely enjoy the complacency of 
success. But, above all, in our deahngs with the souls 
of other men, we are to take care how we check, by 
severe requirement or narrow caution, efforts which 
might otherwise lead to a noble issue ; and, still more, 
how we withhold our admiration from great excellen- 
cies, because they are mingled with rough faults. Now, 
in the make and nature of every man, however rude or 
simple, whom we employ in manual labour, there are 
some powers for better things : some tardy imagination, 
torpid capacity of emotion, tottering steps of thought, 
there are, even at the worst ; and in most cases it is all 
our own fault that they arc tardy or torpid. But they 
cannot be strengthened, unless we are content to take 
them in their feebleness, and unless we prize and hon- 
our them in their imperfection above the best and most 
perfect manual skill. And this is what we have to do 
with all our labourers ; to look for the thoughtful part of 
them, and get that out of them, whatever we lose for it, 
whatever faults and errors we are obliged to take with 
it. For the best that is in them cannot manifest itself, but 
in company with much error. Understand this clearly : 
You can teach a man to draw a straight line, and to 



GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 173 

cut one ; to strike a curved line, and to carve it ; and to 
copy and carve any number of given lines or forms, 
with admirable speed and perfect precision; and you 
find his work perfect of its kind : but if you ask him to 
think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot 
find any better in his own head, he stops ; his execution 
becomes hesitating ; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks 
wrong ; ten to one he makes a mistake in the first touch 
he gives to his work as a thinking being. But you have 
made a man of him for all that. He was only a machine 
before, an animated tool. 

And observe, you are put to stern choice in this mat- 
ter. You must either make a tool of the creature, or a 
man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not 
intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be pre- 
cise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have 
that precision out of them, and make their fingers mea- 
sure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike 
curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them. 
All the energy of their spirits must be given to make 
cogs and compasses of themselves. All their attention 
and strength must go to the accomplishment of the 
mean act. The eye of the soul must be bent upon the 
finger-point, and the soul's force must fill all the invisi- 
ble nerves that guide it, ten hours a day, that it may 
not err from its steely precision, and so soul and sight 
be worn away, and the whole human being be lost at 
last — a heap of sawdust, so far as its intellectual work 
in this world is concerned; saved only by its Heart, 
which cannot go into the form of cogs and compasses, 
but expands, after the ten hours are over, into fireside 
humanity. On the other hand, if you will make a man 
of the working creature, you cannot make a tool. Let 
him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do any- 



174 THE STONES OF VENICE 

thing worth doing; and the engine-turned precision is 
lost at once. Out come all his roughness, all his dul- 
ness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure 
upon failure, pause after pause : but out comes the 
whole majesty of him also ; and we know the height of 
it only when we see the clouds settling upon him. And, 
whether the clouds be bright or dark, there will be 
transfiguration behind and within them. 

And now, reader, look round this English room of 
yours, about which you have been proud so often, be- 
cause the work of it was so good and strong, and the 
ornaments of it so finished. Examine again all those ac- 
curate mouldings, and perfect polishings, and unerring 
adjustments of the seasoned wood and tempered steel. 
Many a time you have exulted over them, and thought 
how great England was, because her slightest work was 
done so thoroughly. Alas ! if read rightly, these per- 
fectnesses are signs of a slavery in our England a thou- 
sand times more bitter and more degrading than that 
of the scourged African, or helot Greek. Men may be 
beaten, chained, tormented, yoked like cattle, slaugh- 
tered like summer flies, and yet remain in one sense, 
and the best sense, free. But to smother their souls 
within them, to Wight and hew into rotting pollards 
the suckling branches of their human intelHgence, to 
make the flesh and skin which, after the worm's work 
on it, is to see God,* into leathern thongs to yoke ma- 
chinery with, — this it is to be slave-masters indeed; 
and there might be more freedom in England, though 
her feudal lords' lightest words were worth men's lives, 
and though the blood of the vexed husbandman 
dropped in the furrows of her fields, than there is while 
the animation of her multitudes is sent like fuel to feed 

* Job xix, 26. 



GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 175 

the factory smoke, and the strength of them is given 
daily to be wasted into the fineness of a web, or racked 
into the exactness of a hne. 

And, on the other hand, go forth again to gaze upon 
the old cathedral front, where you have smiled so often 
at the fantastic ignorance of the old sculptors : examine 
once more those ugly goblins, and formless monsters, 
and stern statues, anatomiless and rigid ; but do not 
mock at them, for they are signs of the life and liberty 
of every workman who struck the stone ; a freedom of 
thought, and rank in scale of being, such as no laws, 
no charters, no charities can secure ; but which it must 
be the first aim of all Europe at this day to regain for 
her children. 

Let me not be thought to speak wildly or extrava- 
gantly. It is verily this degradation of the operative 
into a machine, which, more than any other evil of the 
times, is leading the mass of the nations ever}^'here 
into vain, incoherent, destructive struggling for a free- 
dom of which they cannot explain the nature to them- 
selves. Their universal outcry against wealth, and 
against nobility, is not forced from them either by the 
pressure of famine, or the sting of mortified pride. 
These do much, and have done much in all ages ; but 
the foundations of society were never yet shaken as 
they are at this day. It is not that men are ill fed, but 
that they have no pleasure in the work by which they 
make their bread, and therefore look to wealth as the 
only means of pleasure. It is not that men are pained 
by the scorn of the upper classes, but they cannot en- 
dure their own ; for they feel that the kind of labour to 
which they are condemned is verily a degrading one, 
and makes them less than men. Never had the upper 
classes so much sympathy with the lower, or charity 



176 THE STONES OF VENICE 

for them, as they have at this day, and yet never were 
they so much hated by them : for, of old, the separation 
between the noble and the poor was merely a wall built 
by law ; now it is a veritable difference in level of stand- 
ing, a precipice between upper and lower grounds in 
the field of humanity, and there is pestilential air at the 
bottom of it. I know not if a day is ever to come when 
the nature of right freedom will be understood, and 
when men will see that to obey another man, to labour 
for him, yield reverence to him or to his place, is not 
slavery. It is often the best kind of liberty, — liberty 
from care. The man who says to one, Go, and he goeth, 
and to another. Come, and he cometh,^ has, in most 
cases, more sense of restraint and difficulty than the 
man who obeys him. The movements of the one are 
hindered by the burden on his shoulder ; of the other, 
by the bridle on his lips : there is no way by which the 
burden may be lightened ; but we need not suffer from 
the bridle if we do not champ at it. To yield reverence 
to another, to hold ourselves and our lives at his dis- 
posal, is not slavery ; often it is the noblest state in which 
a man can live in this world. There is, indeed, a rever- 
ence which is servile, that is to say irrational or selfish : 
but there is also noble reverence, that is to say, reason- 
able and loving ; and a man is never so noble as when 
he is reverent in this kind ; nay, even if the feeling pass 
the bounds of mere reason, so that it be loving, a man 
is raised by it. Which had, in reality, most of the serf 
nature in him, — the Irish peasant who was lying in 
wait yesterday for his landlord, with his musket muzzle 
thrust through the ragged hedge ; or that old mountain 
servant, who 200 years ago, at Inverkeithing, gave 
up his own life and the lives of his seven sons for his 

^ Matthew viii, 8. 



GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 177 

chief ? — as each fell, calling forth his brother to the 
death, "Another for Hector!" ^ And therefore, in all 
ages and all countries, reverence has been paid and 
sacrifice made by men to each other, not only without 
complaint, but rejoicingly ; and famine, and peril, and 
sword, and all evil, and all shame, have been borne 
willingly in the causes of masters and kings; for all 
these gifts of the heart ennobled the men who gave, 
not less than the men who received them, and nature 
prompted, and God rewarded the sacrifice. But to feel 
their souls withering within them, unthanked, to find 
their whole being sunk into an unrecognized abyss, to 
be counted off into a heap of mechanism, numbered 
with its wheels, and weighed with its hammer strokes; 
— this nature bade not, — this God blesses not, — 
this humanity for no long time is able to endure. 

We have much studied and much perfected, of late, 
the great civilized invention of the division of labour ; 
only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, 
the labour that is divided ; but the men : — Divided 
into mere segments of men — broken into small frag- 
ments and crumbs of life ; so that all the little piece of 
intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make 
a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point 
of a pin or the head of a nail. Now it is a good and de- 
sirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but 
if we could only see with what crystal sand their points 
were polished, — sand of human soul, much to be mag- 
nified before it can be discerned for what it is, — we 
should think there might be some loss in it also. And 
the great cry that rises from all our manufacturing 
cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed 
for this, — that we manufacture everything there ex- 

* Vide Preface to Fair Maid of Perth. [Ruskin.] 



178 THE STONES OF VENICE 

cept men ; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and 
refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to 
strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, 
never enters into our estimate of advantages. And all 
the evil to which that cry is urging our myriads can be 
met only in one way: not by teaching nor preaching, 
for to teach them is but to show them their misery, and 
to preach to them, if we do nothing more than preach, 
is to mock at it. It can be met only by a right under- 
standing, on the part of all classes, of what kinds of 
labour are good for men, raising them, and making 
them happy; by a determined sacrifice of such con- 
venience, or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only 
by the degradation of the workman ; and by equally 
determined demand for the products and results of 
healthy and ennobling labour. 

And how, it will be asked, are these products to be 
recognized, and this demand to be regulated '^ Easily : 
by the observance of three broad and simple rules : 
• 1. Never encourage the manufacture of any article 
not absolutely necessary, in the production of which 
Invention has no share. 

2. Never demand an exact finish for its own sake, 
but only for some practical or noble end. 

3. Never encourage imitation or copying of any kind, 
except for the sake of preserving record of great works. 

The second of these principles is the only one which 
directly rises out of the consideration of our immediate 
subject; but I shall briefly explain the meaning and 
extent of the first also, reserving the enforcement of the 
third for another place. 

1. Never encourage the manufacture of anything not 
necessary, in the production of which invention has no 
share. 



GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 179 

For instance. Glass beads are utterly unnecessary, 
and there is no design or thought employed in their 
manufacture. They are formed by first drawing out 
the glass into rods; these rods are chopped up into 
fragments of the size of beads by the human hand, and 
the fragments are then rounded in the furnace. The 
men who chop up the rods sit at their work all day, 
their hands vibrating with a perpetual and exquisitely 
timed palsy, and the beads dropping beneath their 
vibration like hail. Neither they, nor the men who 
draw out the rods or fuse the fragments, have the 
smallest occasion for the use of any single human 
faculty; and every young lady, therefore, who buys 
glass beads is engaged in the slave-trade, and in a much 
more cruel one than that which we have so long been 
endeavouring to put down. 

But glass cups and vessels may become the subjects 
of exquisite invention ; and if in buying these we pay 
for the invention, that is to say for the beautiful form, 
or colour, or engraving, and not for mere finish of ex- 
ecution, we are doing good to humanity. 

So, again, the cutting of precious stones, in all or- 
dinary cases, requires little exertion of any mental 
faculty; some tact and judgment in avoiding flaws, 
and so on, but nothing to bring out the whole mind. 
Every person who wears cut jewels merely for the sake 
of their value is, therefore, a slave-driver. 

But the working of the goldsmith, and the various 
designing of grouped jewellery and enamel-work, may 
become the subject of the most noble human intelli- 
gence. Therefore, money spent in the purchase of 
well-designed plate, of precious engraved vases, cam- 
eos, or enamels, does good to humanity ; and, in work 
of this kind, jewels may be employed to heighten its 



180 THE STONES OF VENICE 

splendour ; and their cutting is then a price paid for the 
attainment of a noble end, and thus perfectly allowable. 
I shall perhaps press this law farther elsewhere, but 
our immediate concern is chiefly with the second, 
namely, never to demand an exact finish, when it does 
not lead to a noble end. For observe, I have only dwelt 
upon the rudeness of Gothic, or any other kind of im- 
perfectness, as admirable, where it was impossible to 
get design or thought without it. If you are to have 
the thought of a rough and untaught man, you must 
have it in a rough and untaught way; but from an 
educated man, who can without effort express his 
thoughts in an educated way, take the graceful expres- 
sion, and be thankful. Only get the thought, and do 
not silence the peasant because he cannot speak good 
grammar, or until you have taught him his grammar. 
Grammar and refinement are good things, both, only 
be sure of the better thing first. And thus in art, deli- 
cate finish is desirable from the greatest masters, and 
is always given by them. In some places Michael An- 
gelo, Leonardo, Phidias, Perugino, Turner, all finished 
with the most exquisite care ; and the finish they give 
always leads to the fuller accomplishment of their 
noble purpose. But lower men than these cannot finish, 
for it requires consummate knowledge to finish con- 
summately, and then we must take their thoughts as 
they are able to give them. So the rule is simple : Al- 
ways look for invention first, and after that, for such 
execution as will help the invention, and as the inventor 
is capable of without painful effort, and no more. Above 
all, demand no refinement of execution where there 
is no thought, for that is slaves' work, unredeemed. 
Rather choose rough work than smooth work, so only 
that the practical purpose be answered, and never 



GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 181 

imagine there is reason to be proud of anything that 
may be accomplished by patience and sand-paper. 

I shall only give one example, which however will 
show the reader what I mean, from the manufacture 
already alluded to, that of glass. Our modern glass is 
exquisitely clear in its substance, true in its form, ac- 
curate in its cutting. We are proud of this. We ought 
to be ashamed of it. The old Venice glass was muddy, 
inaccurate in all its forms, and clumsily cut, if at all. 
And the old Venetian was justly proud of it. For there 
is this difference between the English and Venetian 
workman, that the former thinks only of accurately 
matching his patterns, and getting his curves perfectly 
true and his edges perfectly sharp, and becomes a mere 
machine for rounding curves and sharpening edges; 
while the old Venetian cared not a whit whether his 
edges were sharp or not, but he invented a new design 
for every glass that he made, and never moulded a 
handle or a lip without a new fancy in it. And there- 
fore, though some Venetian glass is ugly and clumsy 
enough when made by clumsy and uninventive work- 
men, other Venetian glass is so lovely in its forms that 
no price is too great for it ; and we never see the same 
form in it twice. Now you cannot have the finish and 
the varied form too. If the workman is thinking about 
his edges, he cannot be thinking of his design ; if of his 
design, he cannot think of his edges. Choose whether 
you will pay for the lovely form or the perfect finish, 
and choose at the same moment whether you will make 
the worker a man or a grindstone. 

Nay, but the reader interrupts me, — " If the work- 
man can design beautifully, I would not have him 
kept at the furnace. Let him be taken away and made 
a gentleman, and have a studio, and design his glass 



182 THE STONES OF VENICE 

there, and I will have it blown and cut for him by com- 
mon workmen, and so I will have my design and my 
finish too." 

All ideas of this kind are founded upon two mis- 
taken suppositions : the first, that one man's thoughts 
can be, or ought to be, executed by another man's 
hands; the second, that manual labour is a degrada- 
tion, when it is governed by intellect. 

On a large scale, and in work determinable by line 
and rule, it is indeed both possible and necessary that 
the thoughts of one man should be carried out by the 
labour of others ; in this sense I have already defined 
the best architecture to be the expression of the mind of 
manhood by the hands of childhood. But on a smaller 
scale, and in a design which cannot be mathematically 
defined, one man's thoughts can never be expressed by 
another : and the difference between the spirit of touch 
of the man who is inventing, and of the man who is 
obeying directions, is often all the difference between 
a great and a common work of art. How wide the sepa- 
ration is between original and second-hand execution, 
I shall endeavour to show elsewhere ; it is not so much 
to our purpose here as to mark the other and more fatal 
error of despising manual labour when governed by 
intellect ; for it is no less fatal an error to despise it when 
thus regulated by intellect, than to value it for its own 
sake. We are always in these days endeavouring to 
separate the two ; we want one man to be always think- 
ing, and another to be always working, and we call one 
a gentleman, and the other an operative ; whereas the 
workman ought often to be thinking, and the thinker 
often to be working, and both should be gentlemen, in 
the best sense. As it is, we make both ungentle, the 
one envying, the other despising, his brother ; and the 



GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 183 

mass of society is made up of morbid thinkers, and 
miserable workers. Now it is only by labour that 
thought can be made healthy, and only by thought 
that labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be 
separated with impunity. It would be well if all of us 
were good handicraftsmen in some kind, and the dis- 
honour of manual labour done away with altogether; 
so that though there should still be a trenchant dis- 
tinction of race between nobles and commoners, there 
should not, among the latter, be a trenchant distinction 
of employment, as between idle and working men, or 
between men of liberal and illiberal professions. All 
professions should be liberal, and there should be less 
pride felt in peculiarity of employment, and more in 
excellence of achievement. And yet more, in each 
several profession, no master should be too proud to do 
its hardest work. The painter should grind his own 
colours; the architect work in the mason's yard with 
his men ; the master-manufacturer be himself a more 
skilful operative than any man in his mills ; and the 
distinction between one man and another be only in 
experience and skill, and the authority and wealth which 
these must naturally and justly obtain. 

I should be led far from the matter in hand, if I were 
to pursue this interesting subject. Enough, I trust, has 
been said to show the reader that the rudeness or im- 
perfection which at first rendered the term " Gothic " 
one of reproach is indeed, when rightly understood, one 
of the most noble characters of Christian architecture, 
and not only a noble but an essential one. It seems a 
fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most impor- 
tant truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which 
is not imperfect. And this is easily demonstrable. For 
since the architect, whom we will suppose capable of 



184 THE STONES OF VENICE 

doing all in perfection, cannot execute the whole with 
his own hands, he must either make slaves of his work- 
men in the old Greek, and present English fashion, and 
level his work to a slave's capacities, which is to degrade 
it; or else he must take his workmen as he finds them, 
and let them show their weaknesses together with their 
strength, which will involve the Gothic imperfection, 
but render the whole work as noble as the intellect of 
the age can make it. 

But the principle may be stated more broadly still. 
I have confined the illustration of it to architecture, 
but I must not leave it as if true of architecture only. 
Hitherto I have used the words imperfect and perfect 
merely to distinguish between work grossly unskilful, 
and work executed with average precision and science ; 
and I have been pleading that any degree of unskilful- 
ness should be admitted, so only that the labourer's 
mind had room for expression. But, accurately speak- 
ing, no good work whatever can be perfect, and the de- 
mand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstand- 
ing of the ends of art. 

This for two reasons, both based on everlasting laws. 
The first, that no great man ever stops working till he 
has reached his point of failure : that is to say, his mind 
is always far in advance of his powers of execution, 
and the latter will now and then give way in trying to 
follow it ; besides that he will always give to the inferior 
portions of his work only such inferior attention as they 
require ; and according to his greatness he becomes so 
accustomed to the feeling of dissatisfaction with the 
best he can do, that in moments of lassitude or anger 
with himself he will not care though the beholder be 
dissatisfied also. I believe there has only been one man 
who would not acknowledge this necessity, and strove 



GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 185 

always to reach perfection, Leonardo; the end of his 
vain effort being merely that he would take ten years 
to a picture and leave it unfinished. And therefore, if 
we are to have great men working at all, or less men 
doing their best, the work will be imperfect, however 
beautiful. Of human work none but what is bad can 
be perfect, in its own bad way.^ 

The second reason is, that imperfection is in some 
sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign 
of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of pro- 
gress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, 
rigidly perfect ; part of it is decaying, part nascent. The 
foxglove blossom, — a third part bud, a third part past, 
a third part in full bloom, — is a type of the life of this 
world. And in all things that live there are certain irreg- 
ularities and deficiencies which are not only signs of 
life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly 
the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its 
lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregu- 
larity as they imply change ; and to banish imperfection 
is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze 
vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and 
more beloved for the imperfections which have been 
divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be 
Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy. 

Accept this then for a universal law, that neither 
architecture nor any other noble work of man can be 
good unless it be imperfect ; and let us be prepared for 
the otherwise strange fact, which we shall discern 
clearly as we approach the period of the Renaissance, 

^ The Elgin marbles are supposed by many persons to be "per- 
fect." In the most important portions they indeed approach perfec- 
tion, but only there. The draperies are unfinished, the hair and wool 
of the animals are unfinished, and the entire bas-reliefs of the frieze 
are roughly cut. [Ruskin.] 



186 THE STONES OF VENICE 

that the first cause of the fall of the arts of Europe was 
a relentless requirement of perfection, incapable alike 
either of being silenced by veneration for greatness, or 
softened into forgiveness of simplicity. 

Thus far then of the Rudeness or Savageness, which 
is the first mental element of Gothic architecture. It is 
an element in many other healthy architectures also, 
as in Byzantine and Romanesque ; but true Gothic can- 
not exist without it. 

The second mental element above named was 
Changefulness, or Variety. 

I have already enforced the allowing independent 
operation to the inferior workman, simply as a duty to 
him, and as ennobling the architecture by rendering it 
more Christian. We have now to consider what reward 
we obtain for the performance of this duty, namely, 
the perpetual variety of every feature of the building. 

Wherever the workman is utterly enslaved, the parts 
of the building must of course be absolutely like each 
other; for the perfection of his execution can only be 
reached by exercising him in doing one thing, and giv- 
ing him nothing else to do. The degree in which the 
workman is degraded may be thus known at a glance, 
by observing whether the several parts of the building 
are similar or not ; and if, as in Greek work, all the cap- 
itals are alike, and all the mouldings unvaried, then the 
degradation is complete ; if, as in Egyptian or Ninevite 
work, though the manner of executing certain figures 
is always the same, the order of design is perpetually 
varied, the degradation is less total; if, as in Gothic 
work, there is perpetual change both in design and exe- 
cution, the workman must have been altogether set free. 

How much the beholder gains from the liberty of the 
labourer may perhaps be questioned in England, where 



GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 187 

one of the strongest instincts in nearly every mind is 
that Love of Order which makes us desire that our 
house windows should pair like our carriage horses, 
and allows us to yield our faith unhesitatingly to archi- 
tectural theories which fix a form for everything, and 
forbid variation from it. I would not impeach love of 
order : it is one of the most useful elements of the Eng- 
lish mind ; it helps us in our commerce and in all purely 
practical matters ; and it is in many cases one of the 
foundation stones of morality. Only do not let us sup- 
pose that love of order is love of art. It is true that 
order, in its highest sense, is one of the necessities of 
art, just as time is a necessity of music; but love of 
order has no more to do with our right enjoyment of 
architecture or painting, than love of punctuality with 
the appreciation of an opera. Experience, I fear, 
teaches us that accurate and methodical habits in daily 
life are seldom characteristic of those who either quickly 
perceive, or richly possess, the creative powers of art ; 
there is, however, nothing inconsistent between the two 
instincts, and nothing to hinder us from retaining our 
business habits, and yet fully allowing and enjoying 
the noblest gifts of Invention. We already do so, in 
every other branch of art except architecture, and we 
only do not so there because we have been taught that 
it would be wrong. Our architects gravely inform us 
that, as there are four rules of arithmetic, there are five 
orders of architecture ; we, in our simplicity, think that 
this sounds consistent, and believe them. They inform 
us also that there is one proper form for Corinthian 
capitals, another for Doric, and another for Ionic. We, 
considering that there is also a proper form for the 
letters A, B, and C, think that this also sounds consist- 
ent, and accept the proposition. Understanding, there- 



188 THE STONES OF VENICE 

fore, that one form of the said capitals is proper, and 
no other, and having a conscientious horror of all im- 
propriety, we allow the architect to provide us with the 
said capitals, of the proper form, in such and such a 
quantity, and in all other points to take care that the 
legal forms are observed ; which having done, we rest 
in forced confidence that we are well housed. 

But our higher instincts are not deceived. We take 
no pleasure in the building provided for us, resembling 
that which we take in a new book or a new picture. We 
may be proud of its size, complacent in its correctness, 
and happy in its convenience. We may take the same 
pleasure in its symmetry and workmanship as in a well- 
ordered room, or a skilful piece of manufacture. And 
this we suppose to be all the pleasure that architecture 
was ever intended to give us. The idea of reading a 
building as we would read Milton or Dante, and getting 
the same kind of delight out of the stones as out of the 
stanzas, never enters our minds for a moment. And 
for good reason ; — There is indeed rhythm in the verses, 
quite as strict as the symmetries or rhythm of the archi- 
tecture, and a thousand times more beautiful, but there 
is something else than rhythm. The verses were neither 
made to order, nor to match, as the capitals were ; and 
we have therefore a kind of pleasure in them other than 
a sense of propriety. But it requires a strong effort of 
common sense to shake ourselves quit of all that we 
have been taught for the last two centuries, and wake 
to the perception of a truth just as simple and certain 
as it is new : that great art, whether expressing itself in 
words, colours, or stones, does not say the same thing 
over and over again ; that the merit of architectural, 
as of every other art, consists in its saying new and dif- 
ferent things ; that to repeat itself is no more a charac- 



GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 189 

teristic of genius in marble than it is of genius in print ; 
and that we may, without offending any laws of good 
taste, require of an architect, as we do of a novelist, 
that he should be not only correct, but entertaining. 

Yet all this is true, and self-evident; only hidden 
from us, as many other self-evident things are, by false 
teaching. Nothing is a great work of art, for the pro- 
duction of which either rules or models can be given. 
Exactly so far as architecture works on known rules, 
and from given models, it is not an art, but a manu- 
facture ; and it is, of the two procedures, rather less ra- 
tional (because more easy) to copy capitals or mouldings 
from Phidias, and call ourselves architects, than to 
copy heads and hands from Titian, and call ourselves 
painters. 

Let us then understand at once that change or vari- 
ety is as much a necessity to the human heart and brain 
in buildings as in books ; that there is no merit, though 
there is some occasional use, in monotony; and that 
we must no more expect to derive either pleasure or 
profit from an architecture whose ornaments are of one 
pattern, and whose pillars are of one proportion, than 
we should out of a universe in which the clouds were 
all of one shape, and the trees all of one size. 

And this we confess in deeds, though not in words. 
All the pleasure which the people of the nineteenth 
century take in art, is in pictures, sculpture, minor ob- 
jects of virtu, or mediaeval architecture, which we enjoy 
under the term picturesque : no pleasure is taken any- 
where in modern buildings, and we find all men of true 
feeling delighting to escape out of modern cities into 
natural scenery : hence, as I shall hereafter show, that 
peculiar love of landscape, which is characteristic of 
the age. It would be well, if, in all other matters, we 



190 THE STONES OF VENICE 

were as ready to put up with what we dislike, for the 
sake of compHance with estabHshed law, as we are in 
architecture. 

How so debased a law ever came to be estabHshed, 
we shall see when we come to describe the Renaissance 
schools ; here we have only to note, as the second most 
essential element of the Gothic spirit, that it broke 
through that law wherever it found it in existence; it 
not only dared, but delighted in, the infringement of 
every servile principle ; and invented a series of forms 
of which the merit was, not merely that they were new, 
but that they were capable of perpetual novelty. The 
pointed arch was not merely a bold variation from the 
round, but it admitted of millions of variations in itself; 
for the proportions of a pointed arch are changeable to 
infinity, while a circular arch is always the same. The 
grouped shaft was not merely a bold variation from 
the single one, but it admitted of millions of variations 
in its grouping, and in the proportions resultant from 
its grouping. The introduction of tracery was not only 
a startling change in the treatment of window lights, 
but admitted endless changes in the interlacement of 
the tracery bars themselves. So that, while in all living 
Christian architecture the love of variety exists, the 
Gothic schools exhibited that love in culminating en- 
ergy; and their influence, wherever it extended itself, 
may be sooner and farther traced by this character 
than by any other; the tendency to the adoption of 
Gothic types being always first shown by greater irreg- 
ularity, and richer variation in the forms of the archi- 
tecture it is about to supersede, long before the appear- 
ance of the pointed arch or of any other recognizable 
outward sign of the Gothic mind. 

We must, however, herein note carefully what dis- 



GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 1»1 

tinction there is between a healthy and a diseased love 
of change ; for as it was in healthy love of change that 
the Gothic architecture rose, it was partly in conse- 
quence of diseased love of change that it was destroyed. 
In order to understand this clearly, it will be necessary 
to consider the different ways in which change and 
monotony are presented to us in nature; both having 
their use, like darkness and light, and the one incapable 
of being enjoyed without the other : change being most 
delightful after some prolongation of monotony, as light 
appears most brilliant after the eyes have been for some 
time closed. 

I believe that the true relations of monotony and 
change may be most simply understood by observing 
them in music. We may therein notice first, that there 
is a sublimity and majesty in monotony, which there 
is not in rapid or frequent variation. This is true 
throughout all nature. The greater part of the sub- 
limity of the sea depends on its monotony ; so also that 
of desolate moor and mountain scenery; and especially 
the sublimity of motion, as in the quiet, unchanged 
fall and rise of an engine beam. So also there is sub- 
limity in darkness which there is not in light. 

Again, monotony after a certain time, or beyond a 
certain degree, becomes either uninteresting or intol- 
erable, and the musician is obliged to break it in one 
or two ways : either while the air or passage is perpetu- 
ally repeated, its notes are variously enriched and har- 
monized; or else, after a certain number of repeated 
passages, an entirely new passage is introduced, which 
is more or less delightful according to the length of the 
previous monotony. Nature, of course, uses both these 
kinds of variation perpetually. The sea-waves, resem- 
bling each other in general mass, but none like its 



192 THE STONES OF VENICE 

brother in minor divisions and curves, are a monotony 
of the first kind; the great plain, broken by an emer- 
gent rock or clump of trees, is a monotony of the second. 

Farther : in order to the enjoyment of the change in 
either case, a certain degree of patience is required from 
the hearer or observer. In the first case, he must be 
satisfied to endure with patience the recurrence of the 
great masses of sound or form, and to seek for enter- 
tainment in a careful watchfulness of the minor details. 
In the second case, he must bear patiently the infliction 
of the monotony for some moments, in order to feel the 
full refreshment of the change. This is true even of 
the shortest musical passage in which the element of 
monotony is employed. In cases of more majestic mo- 
notony, the patience required is so considerable that it 
becomes a kind of pain, — a price paid for the future 
pleasure. 

Again : the talent of the composer is not in the mo- 
notony, but in the changes : he may show feeling and 
taste by his use of monotony in certain places or de- 
grees; that is to say, by his various employment of it; 
but it is always in the new arrangement or invention 
that his intellect is shown, and not in the monotony 
which relieves it. 

Lastly: if the pleasure of change be too often re- 
peated, it ceases to be delightful, for then change itself 
becomes monotonous, and we are driven to seek de- 
light in extreme and fantastic degrees of it. This is the 
diseased love of change of which we have above spoken. 

From these facts we may gather generally that mo- 
notony is, and ought to be, in itself painful to us, just 
as darkness is; that an architecture which is altogether 
monotonous is a dark or dead architecture; and of 
those who love it, it may be truly said, " they love dark- 



GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 193 

ness rather than light." But monotony in certain mea- 
sure, used in order to give value to change, and above 
all, that transparent monotony, which, like the shadows 
of a great painter, suffers all manner of dimly suggested 
form to be seen through the body of it, is an essential 
in architectural as in all other composition ; and the en- 
durance of monotony has about the same place in a 
healthy mind that the endurance of darkness has : that 
is to say, as a strong intellect will have pleasure in the 
solemnities of storm and twilight, and in the broken 
and mysterious lights that gleam among them, rather 
than in mere brilliancy and glare, while a frivolous 
mind will dread the shadow and the storm ; and as a 
great man will be ready to endure much darkness of 
fortune in order to reach greater eminence of power or 
felicity, while an inferior man will not pay the price; 
exactly in like manner a great mind will accept, or even 
delight in, monotony which would be wearisome to an 
inferior intellect, because it has more patience and 
power of expectation, and is ready to pay the full price 
for the great future pleasure of change. But in all cases 
it is not that the noble nature loves monotony, any more 
than it loves darkness or pain. But it can bear with it, 
and receives a high pleasure in the endurance or pa- 
tience, a pleasure necessary to the well-being of this 
world ; while those who will not submit to the tempo- 
rary sameness, but rush from one change to another, 
gradually dull the edge of change itself, and bring a 
shadow and weariness over the whole world from which 
there is no more escape. 

From these general uses of variety in the economy of 
the world, w^e may at once understand its use and abuse 
in architecture. The variety of the Gothic schools is 
the more healthy and beautiful, because in many cases 



194 THE STONES OF VENICE 

it is entirely unstudied, and results, not from the mere 
love of change, but from practical necessities. For in 
one point of view Gothic is not only the best, but the 
only rational architecture, as being that which can fit 
itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble. Un- 
defined in its slope of roof, height of shaft, breadth of 
arch, or disposition of ground plan, it can shrink into a 
turret, expand into a hall, coil into a staircase, or spring 
into a spire, with undegraded grace and unexhausted 
energy; and whenever it finds occasion for change in 
its form or purpose, it submits to it without the slightest 
sense of loss either to its unity or majesty, — subtle 
and flexible like a fiery serpent, but ever attentive to 
the voice of the charmer. And it is one of the chief vir- 
tues of the Gothic builders, that they never suffered 
ideas of outside symmetries and consistencies to inter- 
fere with the real use and value of what they did. If 
they wanted a window, they opened one ; a room, they 
added one ; a buttress, they built one ; utterly regardless 
of any established conventionalities of external appear- 
ance, knowing (as indeed it always happened) that 
such daring interruptions of the formal plan would 
rather give additional interest to its symmetry than in- 
jure it. So that, in the best times of Gothic, a useless 
window would rather have been opened in an unex- 
pected place for the sake of the surprise, than a useful 
one forbidden for the sake of symmetry. Every succes- 
sive architect, employed upon a great work, built the 
pieces he added in his own way, utterly regardless of 
the style adopted by his predecessors ; and if two towers 
were raised in nominal correspondence at the sides of a 
cathedral front, one was nearly sure to be different from 
the other, and in each the style at the top to be different 
from the style at the bottom. 



GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 195 

These marked variations were, however, only per- 
mitted as part of the great system of perpetual change 
which ran through every member of Gothic design, 
and rendered it as endless a field for the beholder's 
inquiry as for the builder's imagination : change, which 
in the best schools is subtle and delicate, and rendered 
more delightful by intermingling of a noble monotony; 
in the more barbaric schools is somewhat fantastic and 
redundant; but, in all, a necessary and constant condi- 
tion of the life of the school. Sometimes the variety is 
in one feature, sometimes in another; it may be in the 
capitals or crockets, in the niches or the traceries, or in 
all together, but in some one or other of the features it 
will be found always. If the mouldings are constant, 
the surface sculpture will change ; if the capitals are of 
a fixed design, the traceries will change ; if the traceries 
are monotonous, the capitals will change; and if even, 
as in some fine schools, the early English for example, 
there is the slightest approximation to an unvarying 
type of mouldings, capitals, and floral decoration, the 
variety is found in the disposition of the masses, and 
in the figure sculpture. 

I must now refer for a moment, before we quit the 
consideration of this, the second mental element of 
Gothic, to the opening of the third chapter of the Seven 
Lamps of Architecture, in which the distinction was 
drawn (§ 2) between man gathering and man govern- 
ing; between his acceptance of the sources of delight 
from nature, and his development of authoritative or 
imaginative power in their arrangement : for the two 
mental elements, not only of Gothic, but of all good 
architecture, which we have just been examining, be- 
long to it, and are admirable in it, chiefly as it is, more 
than any other subject of art, the work of man, and the 



196 THE STONES OF VENICE 

expression of the average power of man. A picture or 
poem is often little more than a feeble utterance of 
man's admiration of something out of himself; but 
architecture approaches more to a creation of his own, 
born of his necessities, and expressive of his nature. It 
is also, in some sort, the work of the whole race, while 
the picture or statue are the work of one only, in most 
cases more highly gifted than his fellows. And there- 
fore we may expect that the first two elements of good 
architecture should be expressive of some great truths 
commonly belonging to the whole race, and necessary 
to be understood or felt by them in all their work that 
they do under the sun. And observe what they are: 
the confession of Imperfection, and the confession of 
Desire of Change. The building of the bird and the 
bee needs not express anything like this. It is perfect 
and unchanging. But just because we are something 
better than birds or bees, our building must confess 
that we have not reached the perfection we can ima- 
gine, and cannot rest in the condition we have attained. 
If we pretend to have reached either perfection or satis- 
faction, we have degraded ourselves and our work. 
God's work only may express that ; but ours may never 
have that sentence written upon it, — "And behold, it 
was very good." And, observe again, it is not merely 
as it renders the edifice a book of various knowledge, 
or a mine of precious thought, that variety is essential 
to its nobleness. The vital principle is not the love of 
Knowledge, but the love of Change. It is that strange 
disquietude of the Gothic spirit that is its greatness; 
that restlessness of the dreaming mind, that wanders 
hither and thither among the niches, and flickers fever- 
ishly around the pinnacles, and frets and fades in laby- 
rinthine knots and shadows along wall and roof, and 



GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 197 

yet is not satisfied, nor shall be satisfied. The Greek 
could stay in his triglyph furrow, and be at peace ; but 
the work of the Gothic heart is fretwork still, and it can 
neither rest in, nor from, its labour, but must pass on, 
sleeplessly, until its love of change shall be pacified 
for ever in the change that must come alike on them 
that wake and them that sleep. ... 

Last, because the least essential, of the constituent 
elements of this noble school, was placed that of Re- 
dundance, — the uncalculating bestowal of the wealth 
of its labour. There is, indeed, much Gothic, and that 
of the best period, in which this element is hardly trace- 
able, and which depends for its effect almost exclu- 
sively on loveliness of simple design and grace of un- 
involved proportion; still, in the most characteristic 
buildings, a certain portion of their effect depends upon 
accumulation of ornament; and many of those which 
have most influence on the minds of men, have attained 
it by means of this attribute alone. And although, by 
careful study of the school, it is possible to arrive at a 
condition of taste which shall be better contented by a 
few perfect lines than by a whole fa9ade covered with 
fretwork, the building which only satisfies such a taste 
is not to be considered the best. For the very first 
requirement of Gothic architecture being, as we saw 
above, that it shall both admit the aid, and appeal to 
the admiration, of the rudest as well as the most re- 
fined minds, the richness of the work is, paradoxical as 
the statement may appear, a part of its humility. No 
architecture is so haughty as that which is simple; 
which refuses to address the eye, except in a few clear 
and forceful lines ; which impHes, in offering so little to 
our regards, that all it has offered is perfect; and dis- 
dains, either by the complexity of the attractiveness of 



198 THE STONES OF VENICE 

its features, to embarrass our investigation, or betray 
us into delight. That humility, which is the very life 
of the Gothic school, is shown not only in the imper- 
fection, but in the accumulation, of ornament. The 
inferior rank of the workman is often shown as much 
in the richness, as the roughness, of his work; and if 
the co-operation of every hand, and the sympathy of 
every heart, are to be received, we must be content to 
allow the redundance which disguises the failure of the 
feeble, and wins the regard of the inattentive. There 
are, however, far nobler interests mingling, in the 
Gothic heart, with the rude love of decorative accumu- 
lation : a magnificent enthusiasm, which feels as if it 
never could do enough to reach the fulness of its ideal ; 
an unselfishness of sacrifice, which would rather cast 
fruitless labour before the altar than stand idle in the 
market; and, finally, a profound sympathy with the 
fulness and wealth of the material universe, rising out 
of that Naturalism whose operation we have already 
endeavoured to define. The sculptor who sought for 
his models among the forest leaves, could not but 
quickly and deeply feel that complexity need not in- 
volve the loss of grace, nor richness that of repose ; and 
every hour which he spent in the study of the minute 
and various work of Nature, made him feel more for- 
cibly the barrenness of what was best in that of man : 
nor is it to be wondered at, that, seeing her perfect and 
exquisite creations poured forth in a profusion which 
conception could not grasp nor calculation sum, he 
should think that it ill became him to be niggardly of 
his own rude craftsmanship ; and where he saw through- 
out the universe a faultless beauty lavished on mea- 
sureless spaces of broidered field and blooming moun- 
tain, to grudge his poor and imperfect labour to the 



GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE 199 

few stones that he had raised one upon another, for 
habitation or memorial. The years of his hfe passed 
away before his task was accomplished; but genera- 
tion succeeded generation with unwearied enthusiasm, 
and the cathedral front was at last lost in the tapestry 
of its traceries, like a rock among the thickets and herb- 
age of spring. 



SELECTIONS FROM 
THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 

This book began to assume shape in Ruskin's mind as 
early as 1846 ; he actually wrote it in the six months be- 
tween November, 1848, and April, 1849. It is the first 
of five illustrated volumes embodying the results of seven 
years devoted to the study of the principles and ideals of 
Gothic Architecture, the other volumes being The Stones 
of Venice and Examples of the Architecture of Venice 
(1851). In the first edition of The Seven Lamps the plates 
were not only all drawn but also etched by his own hand. 
Ruskin at a later time wrote that the purpose of The 
Seven Lamps was "to show that certain right states of 
temper and moral feeling were the magic powers by which 
all good architecture had been produced." He is really 
applying here the same tests of truth and sincerity that 
he employed in Modern Painters. Chronologically, this 
volume and the others treating of architecture come be- 
tween the composition of Volumes II and III of Modern 
Painters. Professor Charles Eliot Norton writes that the 
Seven Lamps is ^'the first treatise in English to teach the 
real significance of architecture as the most trustworthy re- 
cord of the life and faith of nations." The following selec- 
tions form the closing chapters of the volume, and have a 
peculiar interest as anticipating the social and political ideas 
which came to colour all his later work. 

THE LAMP OF MEMORY 

Among the hours of his hfe to which the writer looks 
back with peculiar gratitude, as having been marked 
by more than ordinary fulness of joy or clearness of 
teaching, is one passed, now some years ago, near time 
of sunset, among the broken masses of pine forest which 
skirt the course of the Ain, above the village of Cham- 



THE LAMP OF MEMORY 201 

pagnole, in the Jura. It is a spot which has all the 
solemnity, with none of the savageness, of the Alps; 
where there is a sense of a great power beginning to be 
manifested in the earth, and of a deep and majestic 
concord in the rise of the long low lines of piny hills; 
the first utterance of those mighty mountain sympho- 
nies, soon to be more loudly lifted and wildly broken 
along the battlements of the Alps. But their strength 
is as yet restrained ; and the far reaching ridges of pas- 
toral mountain succeed each other, like the long and 
sighing swell which moves over quiet waters from some 
far off stormy sea. And there is a deep tenderness per- 
vading that vast monotony. The destructive forces 
and the stern expression of the central ranges are alike 
withdrawn. No frost-ploughed, dust-encumbered paths 
of ancient glacier fret the soft Jura pastures ; no splin- 
tered heaps of ruin break the fair ranks of her forest; 
no pale, defiled, or furious rivers rend their rude and 
changeful ways among her rocks. Patiently, eddy by 
eddy, the clear green streams wind along their well- 
known beds ; and under the dark quietness of the un- 
disturbed pines, there spring up, year by year, such 
company of joyful flowers as I know not the like of 
among all the blessings of the earth. It was spring time, 
too ; and all were coming forth in clusters crowded for 
very love; there was room enough for all, but they 
crushed their leaves into all manner of strange shapes 
only to be nearer each other. There was the wood 
anemone, star after star, closing every now and then 
into nebulae ; and there was the oxalis, troop by troop, 
like virginal processions of the Mois de Marie, ^ the 
dark vertical clefts in the limestone choked up with 
them as with heavy snow, and touched with ivy on the 
^ May-day processions in honour of the Virgin. 



202 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 

edges — ivy as light and lovely as the vine; and, ever 
and anon, a blue gush of violets, and cowslip bells in 
sunny places ; and in the more open ground, the vetch, 
and comfrey, and mezereon, and the small sapphire 
buds of the Polygala Alpina, and the wild strawberry, 
just a blossom or two all showered amidst the golden 
softness of deep, warm, amber-coloured moss. I came 
out presently on the edge of the ravine: the solemn 
murmur of its waters rose suddenly from beneath, 
mixed with the singing of the thrushes among the pine 
boughs; and, on the opposite side of the valley, walled 
all along as it was by grey cliffs of limestone, there 
was a hawk sailing slowly off their brow, touching them 
nearly with his wings, and with the shadows of the 
pines flickering upon his plumage from above; but 
with the fall of a hundred fathoms under his breast, 
and the curling pools of the green river gliding and 
glittering dizzily beneath him, their foam globes mov- 
ing with him as he flew. It would be difficult to con- 
ceive a scene less dependent upon any other interest 
than that of its own secluded and serious beauty ; but 
the writer well remembers the sudden blankness and 
chill which were cast upon it when he endeavoured, in 
order more strictly to arrive at the sources of its im- 
pressiveness, to imagine it, for a moment, a scene in 
some aboriginal forest of the New Continent. The 
flowers in an instant lost their light, the river its mu- 
sic ; the hills became oppressively desolate ; a heaviness 
in the boughs of the darkened forest showed how 
much of their former power had been dependent upon 
a life which was not theirs, how much of the glory of 
the imperishable, or continually renewed, creation is 
reflected from things more precious in their memories 
than it, in its renewing. Those ever springing flowers 



THE LAMP OF MEMORY 203 

and ever flowing streams had been dyed by the deep 
colours of human endurance, valour, and virtue; and 
the crests of the sable hills that rose against the even- 
ing sky received a deeper worship, because their far 
shadows fell eastward over the iron wall of Joux, and 
the four-square keep of Granson. 

It is as the centralization and protectress of this 
sacred influence, that Architecture is to be regarded 
by us with the most serious thought. We may live with- 
out her, and worship without her, but we cannot 
remember without her. How cold is all history, how 
lifeless all imagery, compared to that which the living 
nation writes, and the uncorrupted marble bears ! — 
how many pages of doubtful record might we not often 
spare, for a few stones left one upon another ! The am- 
bition of the old Babel builders was well directed for 
this world : ^ there are but two strong conquerors of 
the forgetfulness of men. Poetry and Architecture ; and 
the latter in some sort includes the former, and is 
mightier in its reality : it is well to have, not only what 
men have thought and felt, but what their hands have 
handled, and their strength wrought, and their eyes 
beheld, all the days of their life. The age of Homer 
is surrounded with darkness, his very personahty with 
doubt. Not so that of Pericles: and the day is coming 
when we shall confess, that we have learned more of 
Greece out of the crumbled fragments of her sculpture 
than even from her sweet singers or soldier historians. 
And if indeed there be any profit in our knowledge of 
the past, or any joy in the thought of being remembered 
hereafter, which can give strength to present exertion, 
or patience to present endurance, there are two duties 
respecting national architecture whose importance it 
* Genesis xi, 4. 



204 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 

is impossible to overrate : the first, to render the ar- 
chitecture of the day, historical; and, the second, to 
preserve, as the most precious of inheritances, that of 
past ages. 

It is in the first of these two directions that Memory- 
may truly be said to be the Sixth Lamp of Architecture ; 
for it is in becoming memorial or monumental that a 
true perfection is attained by civil and domestic build- 
ings ; and this partly as they are, with such a view, built 
in a more stable manner, and partly as their decora- 
tions are consequently animated by a metaphorical or 
historical meaning. 

As regards domestic buildings, there must always 
be a certain limitation to views of this kind in the power, 
as well as in the hearts, of men ; still I cannot but think 
it an evil sign of a people when their houses are built 
to last for one generation only. There is a sanctity in a 
good man's house which cannot be renewed in every 
tenement that rises on its ruins : and I believe thatgood 
men would generally feel this; and that having spent 
their lives happily and honourably, they would be 
grieved, at the close of them, to think that the place of 
their earthly abode, which had seen, and seemed almost 
to sympathize in, all their honour, their gladness, or 
their suffering, — that this, with all the record it bare 
of them, and of all material things that they had loved 
and ruled over, and set the stamp of themselves upon 
— was to be swept away, as soon as there was room 
made for them in the grave ; that no respect was to be 
shown to it, no affection felt for it, no good to be drawn 
from it by their children ; that though there was a monu- 
ment in the church, there was no warm monument in 
the hearth and house to them ; that all that they ever 
treasured was despised, and the places that had shel- 



THE LAMP OF MEMORY 205 

tered and comforted them were dragged down to the 
dust. I say that a good man would fear this ; and that, 
far more, a good son, a noble descendant, would fear 
doing it to his father's house. I say that if men lived 
like men indeed, their houses would be temples — 
temples which we should hardly dare to injure, and in 
which it would make us holy to be permitted to live ; 
and there must be a strange dissolution of natural affec- 
tion, a strange unthankfulness for all that homes have 
given and parents taught, a strange consciousness that 
we have been unfaithful to our fathers' honour, or that 
our own lives are not such as would make our dwellings 
sacred to our children, when each man would fain build 
to himself, and build for the little revolution of his own 
life only. And I look upon those pitiful concretions of 
lime and clay which spring up, in mildewed forward- 
ness, out of the kneaded fields about our capital — 
upon those thin, tottering, foundationless shells of 
splintered wood and imitated stone — upon those 
gloomy rows of formalized minuteness, alike without 
difference and without fellowship, as solitary as similar 
— not merely with the careless disgust of an offended 
eye, not merely with sorrow for a desecrated landscape, 
but with a painful foreboding that the roots of our 
national greatness must be deeply cankered when they 
are thus loosely struck in their native ground; that 
those comfortless and unhonoured dwellings are the 
signs of a great and spreading spirit of popular discon- 
tent ; that they mark the time when every man's aim is 
to be in some more elevated sphere than his natural 
one, and every man's past life is his habitual scorn; 
when men build in the hope of leaving the places they 
have built, and live in the hope of forgetting the years 
that they have lived ; when the comfort, the peace, the 



206 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 

religion of home have ceased to be felt ; and the crowded 
tenements of a struggling and restless population differ 
only from the tents of the Arab or the Gipsy by their 
less healthy openness to the air of heaven, and less 
happy choice of their spot of earth ; by their sacrifice of 
liberty v^^ithout the gain of rest, and of stability without 
the luxury of change. 

This is no slight, no consequenceless evil; it is 
ominous, infectious, and fecund of other fault and 
misfortune. When men do not love their hearths, nor 
reverence their thresholds, it is a sign that they have 
dishonoured both, and that they have never acknow- 
ledged the true universality of that Christian worship 
which was indeed to supersede the idolatry, but not 
the piety, of the pagan. Our God is a household God, 
as well as a heavenly one; He has an altar in every 
man's dwelling; let men look to it when they rend it 
lightly and pour out its ashes. It is not a question of 
mere ocular delight, it is no question of intellectual 
pride, or of cultivated and critical fancy, how, and with 
what aspect of durability and of completeness, the 
domestic buildings of a nation shall be raised. It is 
one of those moral duties, not with more impunity to be 
neglected because the perception of them depends on a 
finely toned and balanced conscientiousness, to build 
our dwellings with care, and patience, and fondness, 
and diligent completion, and with a view to their dura- 
tion at least for such a period as, in the ordinary course 
of national revolutions, might be supposed likely to 
extend to the entire alteration of the direction of local 
interests. This at the least ; but it would be better if, in 
every possible instance, men built their own houses on a 
scale commensurate rather with their condition at the 
commencement, than their attainments at the termina- 



THE LAMP OF MEMORY 207 

tion, of their worldly career; and built them to stand 
as long as human work at its strongest can be hoped 
to stand ; recording to their children what they had 
been, and from what, if so it had been permitted them, 
they had risen. And when houses are thus built, we may 
have that true domestic architecture, the beginning of 
all other, which does not disdain to treat with respect 
and thoughtfulness the small habitation as well as the 
large, and which invests with the dignity of contented 
manhood the narrowness of worldly circumstance. 

I look to this spirit of honourable, proud, peaceful 
self-possession, this abiding wisdom of contented life, 
as probably one of the chief sources of great intellectual 
power in all ages, and beyond dispute as the very primal 
source of the great architecture of old Italy and France. 
To this day, the interest of their fairest cities depends, 
not on the isolated richness of palaces, but on the cher- 
ished and exquisite decoration of even the smallest 
tenements of their proud periods. The most elaborate 
piece of architecture in Venice is a small house at the 
head of the Grand Canal, consisting of a ground floor 
with two storeys above, three windows in the first, and 
two in the second. Many of the most exquisite build- 
ings are on the narrower canals, and of no larger di- 
mensions. One of the most interesting pieces of fif- 
teenth-century architecture in North Italy, is a small 
house in a back street, behind the market-place of 
Vicenza; it bears date 1481, and the motto, //. nest, 
rose. sans, epine ; it has also only a ground floor and 
two storeys, with three windows in each, separated by 
rich flower-work, and with balconies, supported, the 
central one by an eagle with open wings, the lateral 
ones by winged griffins standing on cornucopise. The 
idea that a house must be large in order to be well built, 



208 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 

is altogether of modern growth, and is parallel with the 
idea, that no picture can be historical, except of a size 
admitting figures larger than life. 

I would have, then, our ordinary dwelling-houses 
built to last, and built to be lovely; as rich and full of 
pleasantness as may be, within and without ; with what 
degree of likeness to each other in style and manner, 
I will say presently, under another head ; ^ but, at all 
events, with such differences as might suit and express 
each man's character and occupation, and partly his 
history. This right over the house, I conceive, belongs 
to its first builder, and is to be respected by his chil- 
dren ; and it would be well that blank stones should be 
left in places, to be inscribed with a summary of his 
life and of its experience, raising thus the habitation 
into a kind of monument, and developing, into more 
systematic instructiveness, that good custom which 
was of old universal, and which still remains among 
some of the Swiss and Germans, of acknowledging the 
grace of God's permission to build and possess a quiet 
resting-place, in such sweet words as may well close 
our speaking of these things. I have taken them from 
the front of a cottage lately built among the green pas- 
tures which descend from the village of Grindelwald 
to the lower glacier : — 

Mit herzlichem Vertrauen 
Hat Johannes Mooter und Maria Rubi 
Dieses Haus bauen lassen. 
Der liebe Gott woll uns bewahren 
Vor allem Ungluck und Gefahren, 
Und es in Segen lassen stehn 
Auf der Reise durch diese Jammerzeit 
Nach dem himmlischen Paradiese, 
Wo alle Frommen wohnen, 
1 See pp. 225 ff . 



THE LAMP OF MEMORY 209 

, Da wird Gott sie belohnen 

Mit der Friedenskrone 
Zu alle Ewigkeit.^ 

In public buildings the historical purpose should be 
still more definite. It is one of the advantages of Gothic 
architecture, — I use the word Gothic in the most ex- 
tended sense as broadly opposed to classical, — that it 
admits of a richness of record altogether unlimited. 
Its minute and multitudinous sculptural decorations 
afford means of expressing, either symbolically or lit- 
erally, all that need be known of national feeling or 
achievement. More decoration will, indeed, be usually 
required than can take so elevated a character; and 
much, even in the most thoughtful periods, has been 
left to the freedom of fancy, or suffered to consist of 
mere repetitions of some national bearing or symbol. 
It is, however, generally unwise, even in mere surface 
ornament, to surrender the power and privilege of 
variety which the spirit of Gothic architecture admits ; 
much more in important features — capitals of col- 
umns or bosses, and string-courses, as of course in 
all confessed bas-reliefs. Better the rudest work that 
tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without 
meaning. There should not be a single ornament put 
upon great civic buildings, without some intellectual 
intention. Actual representation of history has in mod- 
ern times been checked by a diflSculty, mean indeed, 
but steadfast ; that of unmanageable costume : never- 
theless, by a sufficiently bold imaginative treatment, 
and frank use of symbols, all such obstacles may be 

^ In heartfelt trust Johannes Mooter and Maria Rubi had this 
house erected. May dear God shield us from all perils and misfor- 
tune; and let His blessing rest upon it during the journey through 
this wretched life up to heavenly Paradise where the pions dwell. 
There will God reward them with the Crown of Peace to all eternity. 



210 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 

vanquished; not perhaps in the degree necessary to 
produce sculpture in itself satisfactory, but at all events 
so as to enable it to become a grand and expressive ele- 
ment of architectural composition. Take, for example, 
the management of the capitals of the ducal palace at 
Venice. History, as such, was indeed entrusted to the 
painters of its interior, but every capital of its arcades 
was filled with meaning. The large one, the corner 
stone of the whole, next the entrance, was devoted to 
the symbolization of Abstract Justice; above it is a 
sculpture of the Judgment of Solomon, remarkable for 
a beautiful subjection in its treatment to its decorative 
purpose. The figures, if the subject had been entirely 
composed of them, would have awkwardly interrupted 
the line of the angle, and diminished its apparent 
strength ; and therefore in the midst of them, entirely 
without relation to them, and indeed actually between 
the executioner and interceding mother, there rises the 
ribbed trunk of a massy tree, which supports and con- 
tinues the shaft of the angle, and whose leaves above 
overshadow and enrich the whole. The capital below 
bears among its leafage a throned figure of Justice, 
Trajan doing justice to the widow, Aristotle " che die 
legge," and one or two other subjects now unintelligible 
from decay. The capitals next in order represent the 
virtues and vices in succession, as preservative or de- 
structive of national peace and power, concluding with 
Faith, with the inscription " Fides optima in Deo est." 
A figure is seen on the opposite side of the capital, wor- 
shipping the sun. After these, one or two capitals are 
fancifully decorated with birds, and then come a series 
representing, first the various fruits, then the national 
costumes, and then the animals of the various countries 
subject to Venetian rule. 



I 



THE LAMP OF MEMORY ^211 

Now, not to speak of any more important public 
building, let us imagine our own India House adorned 
in this way, by historical or symbolical sculpture : mas- 
sively built in the first place; then chased with bas- 
reliefs of our Indian battles, and fretted with carvings 
of Oriental foliage, or inlaid with Oriental stones ; and 
the more important members of its decoration com- 
posed of groups of Indian life and landscape, and pro- 
minently expressing the phantasms of Hindoo worship 
in their subjection to the Cross. Would not one such 
work be better than a thousand histories ? If, however, 
we have not the invention necessary for such efforts, 
or if, which is probably one of the most noble excuses 
we can offer for our deficiency in such matters, we have 
less pleasure in talking about ourselves, even in marble, 
than the Continental nations, at least we have no ex- 
cuse for any want of care in the points which insure the 
building's endurance. And as this question is one of 
great interest in its relations to the choice of various 
modes of decoration, it will be necessary to enter into 
it at some length. 

The benevolent regards and purposes of men in 
masses seldom can be supposed to extend beyond their 
own generation. They may look to posterity as an audi- 
ence, may hope for its attention, and labour for its 
praise : they may trust to its recognition of unacknow- 
ledged merit, and demand its justice for contemporary 
wrong. But all this is mere selfishness, and does not 
involve the slightest regard to, or consideration of, the 
interest of those by whose numbers we would fain swell 
the circle of our flatterers, and by whoise authority we 
would gladly support our presently disputed claims. 
The idea of self-denial for the sake of posterity, of prac- 
tising present economy for the sake of debtors yet un- 



212 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 

born, of planting forests that our descendants may live 
under their shade, or of raising cities for future nations 
to inhabit, never, I suppose, efficiently takes place 
among publicly recognized motives of exertion. Yet 
these are not the less our duties; nor is our part fitly 
sustained upon the earth, unless the range of our in- 
tended and deliberate usefulness include, not only the 
companions but the successors, of our pilgrimage. God 
has lent us the earth for our life ; it is a great entail. It 
belongs as much to those who are to come after us, and 
whose names are already written in the book of crea- 
tion, as to us ; and we have no right, by anything that 
we do or neglect, to involve them in unnecessary penal- 
ties, or deprive them of benefits which it was in our 
power to bequeath. And this the more, because it is one 
of the appointed conditions of the labour of men that, 
in proportion to the time between the seed-sowing and 
the harvest, is the fulness of the fruit ; and that gener- 
ally, therefore, the farther off we place our aim, and the 
less we desire to be ourselves the witnesses of what we 
have laboured for, the more wide and rich will be the 
measure of our success. Men cannot benefit those that 
are with them as they can benefit those who come after 
them ; and of all the pulpits from which human voice is 
ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so 
far as from the grave. 

Nor is there, indeed, any present loss, in such respect, 
for futurity. Every human action gains in honour, in 
grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard to things 
that are to come. It is the far sight, the quiet and con- 
fident patience, that, above all other attributes, sepa- 
rate man from man, and near him to his Maker; and 
there is no action nor art, whose majesty we may not 
measure by this test. Therefore, when we build, let us 



THE LAMP OF MEMORY 213 

think that we build for ever. Let it not be for present 
delight, nor for present use alone ; let it be such work 
as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, 
as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when 
those stones will be held sacred because our hands have 
touched them, and that men will say as they look upon 
the labour and wrought substance of them, "See! this 
our fathers did for us." For, indeed, the greatest glory 
of a building is not in its stones, nor in its gold. Its 
glory is in its Age, and in that deep sense of voiceful- 
ness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, 
even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in 
walls that have long been washed by the passing waves 
of humanity. It is in their lasting witness against men, 
in their quiet contrast with the transitional character 
of all things, in the strength which, through the lapse of 
seasons and times, and the decline and birth of dynas- 
ties, and the changing of the face of the earth, and of 
the limits of the sea, maintains its sculptured shapeliness 
for a time insuperable, connects forgotten and follow- 
ing ages with each other, and half constitutes the iden- 
tity, as it concentrates the sympathy, of nations : it is 
in that golden stain of time, that we are to look for the 
real light, and colour, and preciousness of architecture ; 
and it is not until a building has assumed this char- 
acter, till it has been entrusted with the fame, and 
hallowed by the deeds of men, till its walls have been 
witnesses of suffering, and its pillars rise out of the 
shadows of death, that its existence, more lasting 
as it is than that of the natural objects of the world 
around it, can be gifted with even so much as these 
possess, of language and of life. 

For that period, then, we must build; not, indeed, 
refusing to ourselves the delight of present completion. 



214 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 

nor hesitating to follow such portions of character as 
may depend upon delicacy of execution to the highest 
perfection of which they are capable, even although 
we may know that in the course of years such details 
must perish ; but taking care that for work of this kind 
we sacrifice no enduring quality, and that the building 
shall not depend for its impressiveness upon anything 
that is perishable. This would, indeed, be the law of 
good composition under any circumstances, the ar- 
rangement of the larger masses being always a matter 
of greater importance than the treatment of the smaller ; 
but in architecture there is much in that very treatment 
which is skilful or otherwise in proportion to its just re- 
gard to the probable effects of time : and (which is still 
more to be considered) there is a beauty in those effects 
themselves, which nothing else can replace, and which 
it is our wisdom to consult and to desire. For though, 
hitherto, we have been speaking of the sentiment of 
age only, there is an actual beauty in the marks of it, 
such and so great as to have become not unfrequently 
the subject of especial choice among certain schools of 
art, and to have impressed upon those schools the char- 
acter usually and loosely expressed by the term " pic- 
turesque." . . . 

Now, to return to our immediate subject, it so hap- 
pens that, in architecture, the superinduced and acci- 
dental beauty is most commonly inconsistent with the 
preservation of original character, and the picturesque 
is therefore sought in ruin, and supposed to consist in 
decay. Whereas, even when so sought, it consists in 
the mere sublimity of the rents, or fractures, or stains, 
or vegetation, which assimilate the architecture with 
the work of Nature, and bestow upon it those circum- 
stances of colour and form which are universally be- 



THE LAMP OF MEMORY 215 

loved by the eye of man. So far as this is done, to the 
extinction of the true characters of the architecture, it 
is picturesque, and the artist who looks to the stem of 
the ivy instead of the shaft of the pillar, is carrying out 
in more daring freedom the debased sculptor's choice 
of the hair instead of the countenance. But so far as it 
can be rendered consistent with the inherent character, 
the picturesque or extraneous sublimity of architecture 
has just this of nobler function in it than that of any 
other object whatsoever, that it is an exponent of age, of 
that in which, as has been said, the greatest glory of the 
building consists; and, therefore, the external signs of 
this glory, having power and purpose greater than any 
belonging to their mere sensible beauty, may be consid- 
ered as taking rank among pure and essential charac- 
ters; so essential to my mind, that I think a building 
cannot be considered as in its prime until four or five 
centuries have passed over it ; and that the entire choice 
and arrangement of its details should have reference to 
their appearance after that period, so that none should 
be admitted which would suffer material injury either 
by the weather-staining, or the mechanical degradation 
which the lapse of such a period would necessitate. 

It is not my purpose to enter into any of the questions 
which the application of this principle involves. They 
are of too great interest and complexity to be even 
touched upon within my present limits, but this is 
broadly to be noticed, that those styles of architecture 
which are picturesque in the sense above explained 
with respect to sculpture, that is to say, whose decora- 
tion depends on the arrangement of points of shade 
rather than on purity of outline, do not suffer, but com- 
monly gain in richness of effect when their details are 
partly worn away; hence such styles, pre-eminently 



216 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 

that of French Gothic, should always be adopted when 
the materials to be employed are liable to degrada- 
tion, as brick, sandstone, or soft limestone ; and styles in 
any degree dependent on purity of line, as the Italian 
Gothic, must be practised altogether in hard and un- 
decomposing materials, granite, serpentine, or crystal- 
line marbles. There can be no doubt that the nature 
of the accessible materials influenced the formation of 
both styles; and it should still more authoritatively 
determine our choice of either. 

It does not belong to my present plan to consider at 
length the second head of duty of which I have above 
spoken ; the preservation of the architecture we possess : 
but a few words may be forgiven, as especially neces- 
sary in modern times. Neither by the public, nor by 
those who have the care of public monuments, is the 
true meaning of the word restoration understood. It 
means the most total destruction which a building can 
suffer : a destruction out of which no remnants can be 
gathered : a destruction accompanied with false de- 
scription of the thing destroyed. Do not let us deceive 
ourselves in this important matter; it is impossible, as 
impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that 
has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That 
which I have above insisted upon as the life of the 
whole, that spirit which is given only by the hand and 
eye of the workman, never can be recalled. Another 
spirit may be given by another time, and it is then a 
new building; but the spirit of the dead workman can- 
not be summoned up, and commanded to direct other 
hands, and other thoughts. And as for direct and 
simple copying, it is palpably impossible. What copy- 
ing can there be of surfaces that have been worn half 
an inch down ? The whole finish of the work was in 



THE LAMP OF MEMORY 217 

the half inch that is gone ; if you attempt to restore that 
finish, you do it conjecturally ; if you copy what is left, 
granting fidelity to be possible (and what care, or watch- 
fulness, or cost can secure it,) how is the new woj-k 
better than the old ? There was yet in the old some life, 
some mysterious suggestion of what it had been, and of 
what it had lost; some sweetness in the gentle lines 
which rain and sun had wrought. There can be none 
in the brute hardness of the new carving. Look at the 
animals which I have given in Plate XIV., as an in- 
stance of living work, and suppose the markings of the 
scales and hair once worn away, or the wrinkles of the 
brows, and who shall ever restore them ? The first step 
to restoration, (I have seen it, and that again and again 
— seen it on the Baptistery of Pisa, seen it on the Casa 
d' Oro at Venice, seen it on the Cathedral of Lisieux,) 
is to dash the old work to pieces; the second is usually 
to put up the cheapest and basest imitation which can 
escape detection, but in all cases, however careful, and 
however laboured, an imitation still, a cold model of 
such parts as can be modelled, with conjectural supple- 
ments ; and my experience has as yet furnished me with 
only one instance, that of the Palais de Justice at Rouen, 
in which even this, the utmost degree of fidelity which 
is possible, has been attained, or even attempted.^ 

Do not let us talk then of restoration. The thing is a 
Lie from beginning to end. You may make a model 
of a building as you may of a corpse, and your model 

^ Baptistery of Pisa, circular, of marble, with dome two hundred 
feet high, embellished with numerous columns, is a notable work 
of the twelfth century. The pulpit is a masterpiece of Nicola Pisano. 
Casa d' Oro at Venice is noted for its elegance. It was built in the 
fourteenth century. The Cathedral of Lisieux dates chiefly from the 
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and contains many works of art. 
The Palais de Justice is of the fifteenth century. It was built for 
the Parliament of the Province. 



218 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 

may have the shell of the old walls within it as your 
cast might have the skeleton, with what advantage I 
neither see nor care : but the old building is destroyed, 
and that more totally and mercilessly than if it had 
sunk into a heap of dust, or melted into a mass of clay : 
more has been gleaned out of desolated Nineveh than 
ever will be out of re-built Milan. But, it is said, there 
may come a necessity for restoration ! Granted. Look 
the necessity full in the face, and understand it on its 
own terms. It is a necessity for destruction. Accept it 
as such, pull the building down, throw its stones into 
neglected corners, make ballast of them, or mortar, if 
you will ; but do it honestly, and do not set up a Lie in 
their place. And look that necessity in the face before it 
comes, and you may prevent it. The prijiciple of mod- 
ern times, (sL principle which, I believe, at least in 
France, to be systematically acted on by the masons, in 
order to find themselves work, as the abbey of St. Ouen 
was pulled down by the magistrates of the town by 
way of giving work to some vagrants,) is to neglect 
buildings first, and restore them afterwards. Take 
proper care of your monuments, and you will not need 
to restore them. A few sheets of lead put in time upon 
the roof, a few dead leaves and sticks swept in time out 
of a water-course, will save both roof and walls from 
ruin. Watch an old building with an anxious care; 
guard it as best you may, and at any cost, from every 
influence of dilapidation. Count its stones as you 
would jewels of a crown ; set watches about it as if at 
the gates of a besieged city ; bind it together with iron 
where it loosens ; stay it with timber where it declines ; 
do not care about the unsightliness of the aid : better 
a crutch than a lost limb; and do this tenderly, and 
reverently, and continually, and many a generation 



THE LAMP OF MEMORY 219 

will still be born and pass away beneath its shadow. 
Its evil day must come at last ; but let it come declaredly 
and openly, and let no dishonouring and false substi- 
tute deprive it of the funeral offices of memory. 

Of more wanton or ignorant ravage it is vain to 
speak ; my words will not reach those who commit them, 
and yet, be it heard or not, I must not leave the truth 
unstated, that it is again no question of expediency or 
feeling whether we shall preserve the buildings of past 
times or not. We have no right whatever to touch them. 
They are not ours. They belong partly to those who 
built them, and partly to all the generations of man- 
kind who are to follow us. The dead have still their 
right in them : that which they laboured for, the praise 
of achievement or the expression of religious feeling, or 
whatsoever else it might be which in those buildings 
they intended to be permanent, we have no right to 
obliterate. What we have ourselves built, we are at 
liberty to throw down ; but what other men gave their 
strength and wealth and life to accomplish, their right 
over does not pass away with their death; still less is 
the right to the use of what they have left vested in us 
only. It belongs to all their successors. It may here- 
after be a subject of sorrow, or a cause of injury, to 
millions, that we have consulted our present conven- 
ience by casting down such buildings as we choose to 
dispense with. That sorrow, that loss, we have no 
right to inflict. Did the cathedral of Avranches ^ be- 
long to the mob who destroyed it, any more than it did 
to us, who walk in sorrow to and fro over its founda- 
tion ? Neither does any building whatever belong to 
those mobs who do violence to it. For a mob it is, and 

^ This cathedral, destroyed in 1799, was one of the most beauti- 
ful in all Normandy. 



220 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 

must be always ; it matters not whether enraged, or in 
dehberate folly; whether countless, or sitting in com- 
mittees; the people who destroy anything causelessly 
are a mob, and Architecture is always destroyed cause- 
lessly. A fair building is necessarily worth the ground 
it stands upon, and will be so until Central Africa and 
America shall have become as populous as Middlesex : 
nor is any cause whatever valid as a ground for its de- 
struction. If ever valid, certainly not now, when the 
place both of the past and future is too much usurped 
in our minds by the restless and discontented present. 
The very quietness of nature is gradually withdrawn 
from us ; thousands who once in their necessarily pro- 
longed travel were subjected to an influence, from the 
silent sky and slumbering fields, more effectual than 
known or confessed, now bear with them even there the 
ceaseless fever of their life; and along the iron veins 
that traverse the frame of our country, beat and flow 
the fiery pulses of its exertion, hotter and faster every 
hour. All vitality is concentrated through those throb- 
bing arteries into the central cities; the country is 
passed over like a green sea by narrow bridges, and we 
are thrown back in continually closer crowds upon the 
city gates. The only influence which can in any wise 
there take the place of that of the woods and fields, is 
the power of ancient Architecture. Do not part with it 
for the sake of the formal square, or of the fenced and 
planted walk, nor of the goodly street nor opened quay. 
The pride of a city is not in these. Leave them to the 
crowd; but remember that there. will surely be some 
within the circuit of the disquieted walls who would 
ask for some other spots than these wherein to walk ; 
for some other forms to meet their sight familiarly : like 
him ^ who sat so often where the sun struck from the 
1 Dante. 



THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 221 

west to watch the hues of the dome of Florence drawn 
on the deep sky, or Hke those, his Hosts, who could 
bear daily to behold, from their palace chambers, the 
places where their fathers lay at rest, at the meeting of 
the dark streets of Verona. 



THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 

It has been my endeavour to show in the preceding 
pages how every form of noble architecture is in some 
sort the embodiment of the Polity, Life, History, and 
Religious Faith of nations. Once or twice in doing 
this, I have named a principle to which I would now 
assign a definite place among those which direct that 
embodiment ; the last place, not only as that to which 
its own humility would incline, but rather as belonging 
to it in the aspect of the crowning grace of all the rest; 
that principle, I mean, to which Polity owes its stability. 
Life its happiness. Faith its acceptance, Creation its 
continuance, — Obedience. 

Nor is it the least among the sources of more serious 
satisfaction which I have found in the pursuit of a sub- 
ject that at first appeared to bear but slightly on the 
grave interests of mankind, that the conditions of 
material perfection which it leads me in conclusion to 
consider, furnish a strange proof how false is the con- 
ception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous 
phantom which men call Liberty: most treacherous, 
indeed, of all phantoms; for the feeblest ray of reason 
might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but 
its being, was impossible. There is no such thing in 
the universe. There can never be. The stars have it 
not; the earth has it not; the sea has it not; and we 



222 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 

men have the mockery and semblance of it only for our 
heaviest punishment. 

In one of the noblest poems * for its imagery and its 
music belonging to the recent school of our literature, 
the writer has sought in the aspect of inanimate nature 
the expression of that Liberty which, having once 
loved, he had seen among men in its true dyes of dark- 
ness. But with what strange fallacy of interpretation ! 
since in one noble line of his invocation he has contra- 
dicted the assumptions of the rest, and acknowledged 
the presence of a subjection, surely not less severe be- 
cause eternal. How could he otherwise ? since if there 
be any one principle more widely than another con- 
fessed by every utterance, or more sternly than another 
imprinted on every atom, of the visible creation, that 
principle is not Liberty, but Law. 

The enthusiast would reply that by Liberty he meant 
the Law of Liberty. Then why use the single and mis- 
understood word t If by liberty you mean chastise- 
ment of the passions, discipline of the intellect, sub- 
jection of the will ; if you mean the fear of inflicting, the 
shame of committing, a wrong; if you mean respect 
for all who are in authority, and consideration for all 
who are in dependence ; veneration for the good, mercy 
to the evil, sympathy with the weak; if you mean 
watchfulness over all thoughts, temperance in all 
pleasures, and perseverance in all toils; if you mean, 
in a word, that Service which is defined in the liturgy 
of the English church to be perfect Freedom, why do 
you name this by the same word by which the luxurious 
mean license, and the reckless mean change; by 
which the rogue means rapine, and the fool, equality; 
by which the proud mean anarchy, and the malignant 
^ Coleridge's Ode to France. 



THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 223 

mean violence ? Call it by any name rather than this, 
but its best and truest, is Obedience. Obedience is, 
indeed, founded on a kind of freedom, else it would 
become mere subjugation, but that freedom is only 
granted that obedience may be more perfect ; and thus, 
while a measure of license is necessary to exhibit the 
individual energies of things, the fairness and pleasant- 
ness and perfection of them all consist in their Restraint. 
Compare a river that has burst its banks with one that 
is bound by them, and the clouds that are scattered 
over the face of the whole heaven with those that are 
marshalled into ranks and orders by its winds. So that 
though restraint, utter and unrelaxing, can never be 
comely, this is not because it is in itself an evil, but 
only because, when too great, it overpowers the nature 
of the thing restrained, and so counteracts the other 
laws of which that nature is itself composed. And the 
balance wherein consists the fairness of creation is 
between the laws of life and being in the things gov- 
erned, and the laws of general sway to which they are 
subjected ; and the suspension or infringement of either 
kind of law, or, literally, disorder, is equivalent to, and 
synonymous with, disease; while the increase of both 
honour and beauty is habitually on the side of restraint 
(or the action of superior law) rather than of character 
(or the action of inherent law). The noblest word in 
the catalogue of social virtue is "Loyalty," and the 
sweetest which men have learned in the pastures of 
the wilderness is "Fold." 

Nor is this all ; but we may observe, that exactly in 
proportion to the majesty of things in the scale of being, 
is the completeness of their obedience to the laws that 
are set over them. Gravitation is less quietly, less 
instantly obeyed by a grain of dust than it is by the 



224 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 

sun and moon; and the ocean falls and flows under 
influences which the lake and river do not recognize. 
So also in estimating the dignity of any action or occu- 
pation of men, there is perhaps no better test than the 
question " are its laws strait ? " For their severity will 
probably be commensurate with the greatness of the 
numbers whose labour it concentrates or whose interest 
it concerns. 

This severity must be singular, therefore, in the case 
of that art, above all others, whose productions are the 
most vast and the most common ; which requires for 
its practice the co-operation of bodies of men, and for 
its perfection the perseverance of successive generations. 
And, taking into account also what we have before so 
often observed of Architecture, her continual influence 
over the emotions of daily life, and her realism, as op- 
posed to the two sister arts which are in comparison 
but the picturing of stories and of dreams, we might 
beforehand expect that we should find her healthy 
state and action dependent on far more severe laws 
than theirs : that the license which they extend to the 
workings of individual mind would be withdrawn by 
her; and that, in assertion of the relations which she 
holds with all that is universally important to man, she 
would set forth, by her own majestic subjection, some 
likeness of that on which man's social happiness and 
power depend. We might, therefore, without the light 
of experience, conclude, that Architecture never could 
flourish excepl when it was subjected to a national 
law as strict and as minutely authoritative as the laws 
which regulate religion, policy, and social relations; 
nay, even more authoritative than these, because both 
capable of more enforcement, as over more passive 
matter; and needing more enforcement, as the purest 



THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 225 

type not of one law nor of another, but of the common 
authority of all. But in this matter experience speaks 
more loudly than reason. If there be any one condition 
which, in watching the progress of architecture, we see 
distinct and general ; if, amidst the counter-evidence of 
success attending opposite accidents of character and 
circumstance, any one conclusion may be constantly 
and indisputably drawn, it is this ; that the architecture 
of a nation is great only when it is as universal and as 
established as its language ; and when provincial differ- 
ences of style are nothing more than so many dialects. 
Other necessities are matters of doubt: nations have 
been alike successful in their architecture in times of 
poverty and of wealth; in times of war and of peace ; in 
times of barbarism and of refinement ; under govern- 
ments the most liberal or the most arbitrary; but this 
one condition has been constant, this one requirement 
clear in all places and at all times, that the work shall 
be that of a school, that no individual caprice shall 
dispense with, or materially vary, accepted types and 
customary decorations ; and that from the cottage to the 
palace, and from the chapel to the basilica, and from 
the garden fence to the fortress wall, every member 
and feature of the architecture of the nation shall be 
as commonly current, as frankly accepted, as its lan- 
guage or its coin. 

A day never passes without our hearing our English 
architects called upon to be original, and to invent a 
new style : about as sensible and necessary an exhorta- 
tion as to ask of a man who has never had rags enough 
on his back to keep out cold, to invent a new mode of 
cutting a coat. Give him a whole coat first, and let 
him concern himself about the fashion of it afterwards. 
We want no new style of architecture. Who wants a 



226 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 

new style of painting or sculpture ? But we want some 
style. It is of marvellously little importance, if we have 
a code of laws and they be good laws, whether they be 
new or old, foreign or native, Roman or Saxon, or 
Norman, or English laws. But it is of considerable 
importance that we should have a code of laws of one 
kind or another, and that code accepted and enforced 
from one side of the island to another, and not one law 
made ground of judgment at York and another in 
Exeter. And in like manner it does not matter one 
marble splinter whether we have an old or new archi- 
tecture, but it matters everything whether we have an 
architecture truly so called or not; that is, whether an 
architecture whose laws might be taught at our schools 
from Cornwall to Northumberland, as we teach Eng- 
lish spelling and English grammar, or an architecture 
which is to be invented fresh every time we build a 
workhouse or a parish school. There seems to me to be 
a wonderful misunderstanding among the majority of 
architects at the present day as to the very nature and 
meaning of Originality, and of all wherein it consists. 
Originality in expression does not depend on invention 
of new words ; nor originality in poetry on invention of 
new measures; nor, in painting, on invention of new 
colours, or new modes of using them. The chords of 
music, the harmonies of colour, the general principles 
of the arrangement of sculptural masses, have been 
determined long ago, and, in all probabihty, cannot be 
added to any more than they can be altered. Granting 
that they may be, such additions or alterations are 
much more the work of time and of multitudes than of 
individual inventors. We may have one Van Eyck,^ 
who will be known as the introducer of a new style 
» Hubert Van Eyck [1366-1440]. The great Flemish master. 



THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 227 

once in ten centuries, but he himself will trace his in- 
vention to some accidental by-play or pursuit; and the 
use of that invention will depend altogether on the pop- 
ular necessities or instincts of the period. Originality 
depends on nothing of the kind. A man who has the 
gift, will take up any style that is going, the style of his 
day, and will work in that, and be great in that, and 
make everything that he does in it look as fresh as if 
ever}^ thought of it had just come down from heaven. 
I do not say that he will not take liberties with his 
materials, or with his rules : I do not say that strange 
changes will not sometimes be wrought by his efforts, 
or his fancies, in both. But those changes will be in- 
structive, natural, facile, though sometimes marvellous; 
they will never be sought after as things necessary to his 
dignity or to his independence ; and those Hberties will 
be like the liberties that a great speaker takes with the 
language, not a defiance of its rules for the sake of 
singularity; but inevitable, uncalculated, and brilliant 
consequences of an effort to express what the language, 
without such infraction, could not. There may be 
times when, as I have above described, the life of an 
art is manifested in its changes, and in its refusal of 
ancient limitations : so there are in the life of an insect ; 
and there is great interest in the state bi both the art 
and the insect at those periods when, by their natural 
progress and constitutional power, such changes are 
about to be wrought. But as that would be both an 
uncomfortable and foolish caterpillar which, instead 
of being contented with a caterpillar's life and feeding 
on caterpillar's food, was always striving to turn itself 
into a chrysalis; and as that would be an unhappy 
chrysalis which should lie awake at night and roll 
restlessly in its cocoon, in efforts to turn itself pre- 



228 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 

maturely into a moth ; so will that art be unhappy and 
unprosperous which, instead of supporting itself on the 
food, and contenting itself with the customs, which 
have been enough for the support and guidance of other 
arts before it and like it, is struggling and fretting 
under the natural limitations of its existence, and striv- 
ing to become something other than it is. And though 
it is the nobility of the highest creatures to look forward 
to, and partly to understand the changes which are 
appointed for them, preparing for them beforehand ; 
and if, as is usual with appointed changes, they be into 
a higher state, even desiring them, and rejoicing in the 
hope of them, yet it is the strength of every creature, 
be it changeful or not, to rest for the time being, con- 
tented with the conditions of its existence, and striving 
only to bring about the changes which it desires, by 
fulfilling to the uttermost the duties for which its pre- 
sent state is appointed and continued. 

Neither originality, therefore, nor change, good 
though both may be, and this is commonly a most 
merciful and enthusiastic supposition with respect to 
either, is ever to be sought in itself, or can ever be 
healthily obtained by any struggle or rebellion against 
common laws. We want neither the one nor the other. 
The forms of architecture already known are good 
enough for us, and for far better than any of us : and it 
will be time enough to think of changing them for 
better when we can use them as they are. But there are 
some things which we not only want, but cannot do 
without; and which all the struggling and raving in the 
world, nay more, which all the real talent and resolu- 
tion in England, will never enable us to do without: 
and these are Obedience, Unity, Fellowship, and Order. 
And all our schools of design, and committees of taste; 



THE LAIMP OF OBEDIENCE 229 

all our academies and lectures, and journalisms, and 
essays; all the sacrifices which we are beginning to 
make, all the truth which there is in our English nature, 
all the power of our English will, and the life of our 
English intellect, will in this matter be as useless as 
efforts and emotions in a dream, unless we are con- 
tented to submit architecture and all art, like other 
things, to English law. 

I say architecture and all art ; for I believe architec- 
ture must be the beginning of arts, and that the others 
must follow her in their time and order; and I think 
the prosperity of our schools of painting and sculpture, 
in which no one will deny the life, though many the 
health, depends upon that of our architecture. I think 
that all will languish until that takes the lead, and 
(this I do not think, but I proclaim, as confidently as I 
would assert the necessity, for the safety of society, of 
an understood and strongly administered legal gov- 
ernment) our architecture will languish, and that in 
the very dust, until the first principle of common sense 
be manfully obeyed, and an universal system of form 
and workmanship be everywhere adopted and en- 
forced. It may be said that this is impossible. It may 
be so — I fear it is so : I have nothing to do with the 
possibility or impossibility of it; I simply know and 
assert the necessity of it. If it be impossible, English 
art is impossible. Give it up at once. You are wasting 
time, and money, and energy upon it, and though you 
exhaust centuries and treasures, and break hearts for 
it, you will never raise it above the merest dilettanteism. 
Think not of it. It is a dangerous vanity, a mere gulph 
in which genius after genius will be swallowed up, and 
it will not close. And so it will continue to be, unless 
the one bold and broad step be taken at the beginning. 



230 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 

We shall not manufacture art out of pottery and printed 
stuffs ; we shall not reason out art by our philosophy ; 
we shall not stumble upon art by our experiments, nor 
create it by our fancies : I do not say that we can even 
build it out of brick and stone ; but there is a chance for 
us in these, and there is none else; and that chance 
rests on the bare possibility of obtaining the consent, 
both of architects and of the public, to choose a style, 
and to use it universally. 

How surely its principles ought at first to be limited, 
we may easily determine by the consideration of the 
necessary modes of teaching any other branch of gen- 
eral knowledge. When we begin to teach children 
writing, we force them to absolute copyism, and require 
absolute accuracy in the formation of the letters; as 
they obtain command of the received modes of literal 
expression, we cannot prevent their falling into such 
variations as are consistent with their feeling, their 
circumstances, or their characters. So, when a boy is 
first taught to write Latin, an authority is required of 
him for every expression he uses ; as he becomes master 
of the language he may take a license, and feel his right 
to do so without any authority, and yet write better 
Latin than when he borrowed every separate expres- 
sion. In the same way our architects would have to be 
taught to write the accepted style. We must first de- 
termine what buildings are to be considered Augustan 
in their authority; their modes of construction and 
laws of proportion are to be studied with the most 
penetrating care ; then the different forms and uses of 
their decorations are to be classed and catalogued, as a 
German grammarian classes the powers of prepositions; 
and under this absolute, irrefragable authority, we are 
to begin to work; admitting not so much as an altera- 



THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 231 

tion in the depth of a cavetto,^ or the breadth of a fillet. 
Then, when our sight is once accustomed to the gram- 
matical forms and arrangements, and our thoughts 
familiar with the expression of them all ; when we can 
speak this dead language naturally, and apply it to 
whatever ideas we have to render, that is to say, to 
every practical purpose of life ; then, and not till then, a 
license might be permitted, and individual authority 
allowed to change or to add to the received forms, al- 
ways within certain limits ; the decorations, especially, 
might be made subjects of variable fancy, and enriched 
with ideas either original or taken from other schools. 
And thus, in process of time and by a great national 
movement, it might come to pass that a new style 
should arise, as language itself changes ; we might per- 
haps come to speak Italian instead of Latin, or to speak 
modern instead of old English; but this would be a 
matter of entire indifference, and a matter, besides, 
wliich no determination or desire could either hasten 
or prevent. That alone which it is in our power to ob- 
tain, and which it is our duty to desire, is an unanimous 
style of some kind, and such comprehension and prac- 
tice of it as would enable us to adapt its features to the 
peculiar character of every several building, large or 
small, domestic, civil or ecclesiastical. 

* A hollowed moulding. [New Eng. Diet.] 



SELECTIONS FROM LECTURES ON ART 

E-usKiN was first elected to the Slade Professorship of 
Fine Art in Oxford in 1869, and held the chair continu- 
ously until 1878, when he resigned because of ill-health, 
and again from 1883 to 1885. The Lectures on Art were 
announced in the Oxford University Gazette of January 
28, 1870, the general subject of the course being "■ The 
Limits and Elementary Practice of Art," with Leonardo's 
Trattato della Pittura as the text-book. The lectures were 
delivered between February 8 and March 23, 1870. They 
appeared'in book form in July of the same year. These lec- 
tures contain much of his best and most mature thought, 
of his most painstaking research and keenest analysis. 
Talking with a friend in later years, he said : " I have taken 
more pains with the Oxford Lectures than with anything 
else I have ever done " : and in the preface to the edition 
of 1887 he began : " The following lectures were the most 
important piece of my literary work, done with unabated 
power, best motive, and happiest concurrence of circum- 
stance." Ruskin took his professorship very seriously. He 
spent almost infinite labour in composing his more formal 
lectures, and during the eight years in which he held the 
chair he published six volumes of them, not to mention 
three Italian guide-books, which came under his interpreta- 
tion of his professional duties; — "the real duty involved 
in my Oxford Professorship cannot be completely done 
by giving lectures in Oxford only, but ... I ought also 
to give what guidance I may to travellers in Italy." Not 
only by lecturing and writing did he fill the chair, but he 
taught individuals, founded and endowed a Drawing mas- 
tership, and presented elaborately catalogued collections 
to illustrate his subject. His lecture classes were always 
large, and his work had a marked influence in the Univer- 
sity. 



INAUGURAL 



INAUGURAL 



We see lately a most powerful impulse given to the 
production of costly works of art by the various causes 
which promote the sudden accumulation of wealth in 
the hands of private persons. We have thus a vast and 
new patronage, which, in its present agency, is in- 
jurious to our schools; but which is nevertheless in a 
great degree earnest and conscientious, and far from 
being influenced chiefly by motives of ostentation. 
Most of our rich men would be glad to promote the 
true interests of art in this country; and even those 
who buy for vanity, found their vanity on the posses- 
sion of what they suppose to be best. 

It is therefore in a great measure the fault of artists 
themselves if they suffer from this partly unintelligent, 
but thoroughly well-intended patronage. If they seek 
to attract it by eccentricity, to deceive it by superficial 
qualities, or take advantage of it by thoughtless and 
facile production, they necessarily degrade themselves 
and it together, and have no right to complain after- 
wards that it will not acknowledge better-grounded 
claims. But if every painter of real power would do 
only what he knew to be worthy of himself, and re- 
fuse to be involved in the contention for undeserved 
or accidental success, there is indeed, whatever may 
have been thought or said to the contrary, true instinct 
enough in the public mind to follow such firm guidance. 
It is one of the facts which the experience of thirty years 
enables me to assert without qualification, that a really 
good picture is ultimately always approved and bought, 
unless it is wilfully rendered offensive to the public by 
faults which the artist has been either too proud to 
abandon or too weak to correct. 



234 LECTURES ON ART 

The development of whatever is healthful and 
serviceable in the two modes of impulse which we 
have been considering, depends however, ultimately, 
on the direction taken by the true interest in art which 
has lately been aroused by the great and active genius 
of many of our living, or but lately lost, painters, 
sculptors, and architects. It may perhaps surprise, 
but I think it will please you to hear me, or (if you will 
forgive me, in my own Oxford, the presumption of 
fancying that some may recognize me by an old name) 
to hear the author of Modern Painters say, that his 
chief error in earlier days was not in over-estimating, 
but in too slightly acknowledging the merit of living 
men. The great painter whose power, while he was yet 
^mong us, I was able to perceive,^ was the first to reprove 
me for my disregard of the skill of his fellow-artists; 
and, with this inauguration of the study of the art of 
all time, — a study which can only by true modesty end 
in wise admiration, — it is surely well that I connect 
the record of these words of his, spoken then too truly 
to myself, and true always more or less for all who are 
untrained in that toil, — " You don't know how diffi- 
cult it is." 

You will not expect me, within the compass of this 
lecture, to give you any analysis of the many kinds of 
excellent art (in all the three great divisions) which the 
complex demands of modern life, and yet more varied 
instincts of modern genius, have developed for pleasure 
or service. It must be my endeavour, in conjunction 
with my colleagues in other Universities, hereafter to 
enable you to appreciate these worthily; in the hope 
that also the members of the Royal Academy, and 
those of the Institute of British Architects, may be 
induced to assist, and guide, the efforts of the Universi- 
* Turner. 



INAUGURAL 235 

ties, by organizing such a system of art education for 
their own students, as shall in future prevent the waste 
of genius in any mistaken endeavours; especially 
removing doubt as to the proper substance and use 
of materials; and requiring compliance with certain 
elementary principles of right, in every picture and 
design exhibited with their sanction. It is not indeed 
possible for talent so varied as that of English artists 
to be compelled into the formalities of a determined 
school ; but it must certainly be the function of every 
academical body to see that their younger students are 
guarded from what must in every school be error ; and 
that they are practised in the best methods of work 
hitherto known, before their ingenuity is directed to 
the invention of others. 

I need scarcely refer, except for the sake of com- 
pleteness in my statement, to one form of demand for 
art which is wholly unenlightened, and powerful only 
for evil ; — namely, the demand of the classes occupied 
solely in the pursuit of pleasure, for objects and modes 
of art that can amuse indolence or excite passion. 
There is no need for any discussion of these require- 
ments, or of their forms of influence, though they are 
very deadly at present in their operation on sculpture, 
and on jewellers' work. They cannot be checked by 
blame, nor guided by instruction ; they are merely the 
necessary results of whatever defects exist in the temper 
and principles of a luxurious society ; and it is only by 
moral changes, not by art-criticism, that their action 
can be modified. 

Lastly, there is a continually increasing demand for 
popular art, multipliable by the printing-press, illus- 
trative of daily events, of general literature, and of 
natural science. Admirable skill, and some of the best 



236 LECTURES ON ART 

talent of modern times, are occupied in supplying this 
want ; and there is no limit to the good which may be 
effected by rightly taking advantage of the powers we 
now possess of placing good and lovely art within the 
reach of the poorest classes. Much has been already 
accomplished; but great harm has been done also, — 
first, by forms of art definitely addressed to depraved 
tastes; and, secondly, in a more subtle way, by really 
beautiful and useful engravings which are yet not good 
enough to retain their influence on the public mind ; — 
which weary it by redundant quantity of monotonous 
average excellence, and diminish or destroy its power 
of accurate attention to work of a higher order. 

Especially this is to be regretted in the effect pro- 
duced on the schools of line engraving, which had 
reached in England an executive skill of a kind before 
unexampled, and which of late have lost much of their 
more sterling and legitimate methods. Still, I have 
seen plates produced quite recently, more beautiful, I 
think, in some qualities than anything ever before 
attained by the burin : ^ and I have not the slightest fear 
that photography, or any other adverse or competitive 
operation, will in the least ultimately diminish, — I 
believe they will, on the contrary, stimulate and exalt — 
the grand old powers of the wood and the steel. 

Such are, I think, briefly the present conditions of 
art with which we have to deal ; and I conceive it to be 
the function of this Professorship, with respect to them, 
to establish both a practical and critical school of fine 
art for English gentlemen : practical, so that, if they 
draw at all, they may draw rightly ; and critical, so that, 
being first directed to such works of existing art as will 
best reward their study, they may afterwards make 
1 The tool of the engraver on copper. 



INAUGURAL 237 

their patronage of living artists delightful to them- 
selves in their consciousness of its justice, and, to the 
utmost, beneficial to their country, by being given only 
to the men who deserve it ; in the early period of their 
lives, when they both need it most and can be influ- 
enced by it to the best advantage. 

And especially with reference to this function of 
patronage, I believe myself justified in taking into 
account future probabilities as to the character and 
range of art in England ; and I shall endeavour at once 
to organize with you a system of study calculated to 
develope chiefly the knowledge of those branches in 
which the English schools have shown, and are likely 
to show, peculiar excellence. 

Now, in asking your sanction both for the nature of 
the general plans I wish to adopt, and for what I con- 
ceive to be necessary limitations of them, I wish you 
to be fully aware of my reasons for both : and I will 
therefore risk the burdening of your patience while I 
state the directions of effort in which I think English 
artists are liable to failure, and those also in which 
past experience has shown they are secure of success. 

I referred, but now, to the effort we are making to 
improve the designs of our manufactures. Within cer- 
tain limits I believe this improvement may indeed take 
effect: so that we may no more humour momentary 
fashions by ugly results of chance instead of design; 
and may produce both good tissues, of harmonious 
colours, and good forms and substance of pottery and 
glass. But we shall never excel in decorative design. 
Such design is usually produced by people of great 
natural powers of mind, who have no variety of sub- 
jects to employ themselves on, no oppressive anxieties, 
and are in circumstances either of natural scenery or 



238 LECTURES ON ART 

of daily life, which cause pleasurable excitement. We 
cannot design because we have too much to think of, 
and we think of it too anxiously. It has long been 
observed how little real anxiety exists in the minds of 
the partly savage races which excel in decorative art ; 
and we must not suppose that the temper of the middle 
ages was a troubled one, because every day brought its 
dangers or its changes. The very eventfulness of the life 
rendered it careless, as generally is still the case with 
soldiers and sailors. Now, when there are great powers 
of thought, and little to think of, all the waste energy 
and fancy are thrown into the manual work, and you 
have as much intellect as would direct the affairs of 
a large mercantile concern for a day, spent all at once, 
quite unconsciously, in drawing an ingenious spiral. 

Also, powers of doing fine ornamental work are only 
to be reached by a perpetual discipline of the hand as 
well as of the fancy ; discipline as attentive and painful 
as that which a juggler has to put himself through, to 
overcome the more palpable difficulties of his profes- 
sion. The execution of the best artists is always a 
splendid tour-de-force, and much that in painting is 
supposed to be dependent on material is indeed only a 
lovely and quite inimitable legerdemain. Now, when 
powers of fancy, stimulated by this triumphant preci- 
sion of manual dexterity, descend uninterruptedly from 
generation to generation, you have at last, what is not 
so much a trained artist as a new species of animal, with 
whose instinctive gifts you have no chance of con- 
tending. And thus all our imitations of other peoples' 
work are futile. We must learn first to make honest 
English wares, and afterward to decorate them as may 
please the then approving Graces. 

Secondly — and this is an incapacity of a graver 



INAUGURAL 239 

kind, yet having its own good in it also — we shall 
never be successful in the highest fields of ideal or 
theological art. 

For there is one strange, but quite essential, charac- 
ter in us — ever since the Conquest, if not earlier: — 
a delight in the forms of burlesque which are con- 
nected in some degree with the foulness in evil. I think 
the most perfect type of a true English mind in its best 
possible temper, is that of Chaucer; and you will find 
that, while it is for the most part full of thoughts of 
beauty, pure and wild like that of an April morning, 
there are, even in the midst of this, sometimes momen- 
tarily jesting passages which stoop to play with evil — - 
while the power of listening to and enjoying the jesting 
of entirely gross persons, whatever the feeling may be 
which permits it, afterwards degenerates into forms 
of humour which render some of quite the greatest, 
wisest, and most moral of English writers now almost 
useless for our youth. And yet you will find that when- 
ever Englishmen are wholly without this instinct, their 
genius is comparatively weak and restricted. 

Now, the first necessity for the doing of any great 
work in ideal art, is the looking upon all foulness with 
horror, as a contemptible though dreadful enemy. You 
may easily understand what I mean, by comparing the 
feelings with which Dante regards any form of obscenity 
or of base jest, with the temper in which the same things 
are regarded by Shakspere. And this strange earthly 
instinct of ours, coupled as it is, in our good men, 
with great simplicity and common sense, renders them 
shrewd and perfect observers and delineators of actual 
nature, low or high ; but precludes them from that spe- 
ciality of art which is properly called sublime. If ever 
we try anything in the manner of Michael Angelo or of 



240 LECTURES ON ART 

Dante, we catch a fall, even in literature, as Milton in 
the battle of the angels, spoiled from Hesiod :^ while in 
art, every attempt in this style has hitherto been the sign 
either of the presumptuous egotism of persons who had 
never really learned to be workmen, or it has been con- 
nected with very tragic forms of the contemplation of 
death, — it has always been partly insane, and never 
once wholly successful. 

But we need not feel any discomfort in these limi- 
tations of our capacity. We can do much that others 
cannot, and more than we have ever yet ourselves com- 
pletely done. Our first great gift is in the portraiture of 
living people — a power already so accomplished in 
both Reynolds and Gainsboirough, that nothing is left 
for future masters but to add the calm of perfect work- 
manship to their vigour and felicity of perception. And 
of what value a true school of portraiture may become 
in the future, when worthy men will desire only to be 
known, and others will not fear to know them, for what 
they truly were, we cannot from any past records of art 
influence yet conceive. But in my next address it will 
be partly my endeavour to show you how much more 
useful, because more humble, the labour of great mas- 
ters might have been, had they been content to bear 
record of the souls that were dwelling with them on 
earth, instead of striving to give a deceptive glory to 
those they dreamed of in heaven. 

Secondly, we have an intense power of invention 
and expression in domestic drama; (King Lear and 
Hamlet being essentially domestic in their strongest 
motives of interest). There is a tendency at this mo- 
ment towards a noble development of our art in this 
direction, checked by many adverse conditions, which 

1 See Paradise Lost 6. 207 flf., and Hesiod's Theogony, 676 ff. 



INAUGURAL 241 

may be summed in one, — the insufficiency of generous 
civic or patriotic passion in the heart of the English 
people; a fault which makes its domestic affections 
selfish, contracted, and, therefore, frivolous. 

Thirdly, in connection with our simplicity and good- 
humour, and partly with that very love of the grotesque 
which debases our ideal, we have a sympathy with the 
lower animals which is peculiarly our own ; and which, 
though it has already found some exquisite expression 
in the works of Bewick and Landseer, is yet quite un- 
developed. This sympathy, with the aid of our now 
authoritative science of physiology, and in association 
with our British love of adventure, will, I hope, enable 
us to give to the future inhabitants of the globe an 
almost perfect record of the present forms of animal 
life upon it, of which many are on the point of being 
extinguished. . . . 

While I myself hold this professorship, I shall direct 
you in these exercises very definitely to natural his- 
tory, and to landscape ; not only because in these two 
branches I am probably able to show you truths which 
might be despised by my successors; but because I 
think the vital and joyful study of natural history quite 
the principal element requiring introduction, not only 
into University, but into national, education, from 
highest to lowest ; and I even will risk incurring your 
ridicule by confessing one of my fondest dreams, that 
I may succeed in making some of you English youths 
like better to look at a bird than to shoot it ; and even 
desire to make wild creatures tame, instead of tame 
creatures wild. And for the study of landscape, it is, I 
think, now calculated to be of use in deeper, if not more 
important modes, than that of natural science, for rea- 
sons which I will ask you to let me state at some length. 



242 LECTURES ON ART 

Observe first; — no race of men which is entirely 
bred in wild country, far from cities, ever enjoys land- 
scape. They may enjoy the beauty of animals, but 
scarcely even that : a true peasant cannot see the beauty 
of cattle ; but only the qualities expressive of their ser- 
viceableness. I waive discussion of this to-day; permit 
my assertion of it, under my confident guarantee of 
future proof. Landscape can only be enjoyed by culti- 
vated persons ; and it is only by music, literature, and 
painting, that cultivation can be given. Also, the fac- 
ulties which are thus received are hereditary; so that 
the child of an educated race has an innate instinct for 
beauty, derived from arts practised hundreds of years 
before its birth. Now farther note this, one of the 
loveliest things in human nature. In the children of 
noble races, trained by surrounding art, and at the 
same time in the practice of great deeds, there is an 
intense delight in the landscape of their country as 
memorial ; a sense not taught to them, nor teachable 
to any others ; but, in them, innate ; and the seal and 
reward of persistence in great national life ; — the obe- 
dience and the peace of ages having extended gradually 
the glory of the revered ancestors also to the ancestral 
land ; until the Motherhood of the dust, the mystery 
of the Demeter from whose bosom we came, and to 
whose bosom we return, surrounds and inspires, 
everywhere, the local awe of field and fountain; the 
sacredness of landmark that none may remove, and of 
wave that none may pollute; while records of proud 
days, and of dear persons, make every rock monu- 
mental with ghostly inscription, and every path lovely 
with noble desolateness. 

Now, however checked by lightness of temperament, 
the instinctive love of landscape in us has this deep 



INAUGURAL 243 

root, which, in your minds, I will pray you to disen- 
cumber from whatever may oppress or mortify it, and 
to strive to feel with all the strength of your youth that 
a nation is only worthy of the soil and the scenes that it 
has inherited, when, by all its acts and arts, it is making 
them more lovely for its children. . . . 

But if either our work, or our inquiries, are to be 
indeed successful in their own field, they must be con- 
nected with others of a sterner character. Now listen 
to me, if I have in these past details lost or burdened 
your attention ; for this is what I have chiefly to say to 
you. The art of any country is the exponent of its social 
and political virtues. I will show you that it is so in 
some detail, in the second of my subsequent course of 
lectures; meantime accept this as one of the things, 
and the most important of all things, I can positively 
declare to you. The art, or general productive and 
formative energy, of any country, is an exact exponent 
of its ethical life. You can have noble art only from 
noble persons, associated under laws fitted to their 
time and circumstances. And the best skill that any 
teacher of art could spend here in your help, would not 
end in enabling you even so much as rightly to draw 
the water-lilies in the Cherwell (and though it did, the 
work when done would not be worth the lilies them- 
selves) unless both he and you were seeking, as I trust 
we shall together seek, in the laws which regulate the 
finest industries, the clue to the laws which regulate 
all industries, and in better obedience to which we shall 
actually have henceforward to live : not merely in com- 
pliance with our own sense of what is right, but under 
the weight of quite literal necessity. For the trades by 
which the British people has believed it to be the high- 
est of destinies to maintain itself, cannot now long 



244 LECTURES ON ART 

remain undisputed in its hands ; its unemployed poor 
are daily becoming more violently criminal; and a 
certain distress in the middle classes, arising, partly 
from their vanity in living always up to their incomes, 
and partly from their folly in imagining that they can 
subsist in idleness upon usury, will at last compel the 
sons and daughters of English families to acquaint 
themselves with the principles of providential economy ; 
and to learn that food can only be got out of the ground, 
and competence only secured by frugality; and that 
although it is not possible for all to be occupied in the 
highest arts, nor for any, guiltlessly, to pass their days 
in a succession of pleasures, the most perfect mental 
culture possible to men is founded on their useful ener- 
gies, and their best arts and brightest happiness are 
consistent, and consistent only, with their virtue. 

This, I repeat, gentlemen, will soon become manifest 
to those among us, and there are yet many, who are 
honest-hearted. And the future fate of England de- 
pends upon the position they then take, and on their 
courage in maintaining it. 

There is a destiny now possible to us — the highest 
ever set before a nation to be accepted or refused. We 
are still undegenerate in race; a race mingled of the 
best northern blood. We are not yet dissolute in tem- 
per, but still have the firmness to govern, and the grace 
to obey. We have been taught a religion of pure mercy, 
which we must either now betray, or learn to defend by 
fulfilling. And we are rich in an inheritance of honour, 
bequeathed to us through a thousand years of noble 
history, which it should be our daily thirst to increase 
with splendid avarice, so that Englishmen, if it be a sin 
to covet honour, should be the most ofi^ending souls 
alive.* Within the last few years we have had the laws 
» Henry V, 4. 3. 29. 



INAUGURAL 245 

of natural science opened to us with a rapidity which 
has been blinding by its brightness; and means of 
transit and communication given to us, which have 
made but one kingdom of the habitable globe. One 
kingdom ; — but who is to be its king ? Is there to be 
no king in it, think you, and every man to do that which 
is right in his own eyes ? Or only kings of terror, and 
the obscene empires of Mammon and Belial? Or will 
you, youths of England, make your country again a 
royal throne of kings ; a sceptred isle, for all the world 
a source of light, a centre of peace ; mistress of Learn- 
ing and of the Arts ; — faithful guardian of great mem- 
ories in the midst of irreverent and ephemeral visions ; 
— faithful servant of time-tried principles, under temp- 
tation from fond experiments and licentious desires; 
and amidst the cruel and clamorous jealousies of the 
nations, worshipped in her strange valour of goodwill 
toward men ? ^ 

" Vexilla regis prodeunt." ^ Yes, but of which king ? 
There are the two oriflammes ; which shall we plant on 
the farthest islands — the one that floats in heavenly 
fire, or that hangs heavy with foul tissue of terrestrial 
gold ? There is indeed a course of beneficent glory open 
to us, such as never was yet offered to any poor group 
of mortal souls. But it must be — it is with us, now, 
" Reign or Die." And if it shall be said of this country, 
" Fece per viltate, il gran rifiuto," ^ that refusal of the 
crown will be, of all yet recorded in history, the shame- 
fullest and most untimely. 

^ Luke ii, 14. 

^ " Forward go the banners of the King," or more commonly, 
" The royal banners forward go." One of the seven great hymns 
of the Church. See the Episcopal Hymnal, 94. 

3 Dante, Inferno, 3. 60. "Who made through cowardice the 
great refusal." Longfellow's tr. 



246 LECTURES ON ART 

And this is what she must either do, or perish : she 
must found colonies as fast and as far as she is able, 
formed of her most energetic and worthiest men ; — 
seizing every piece of fruitful waste ground she can set 
her foot on, and there teaching these her colonists that 
their chief virtue is to be fidelity to their country, and 
that their first aim is to be to advance the power of 
England by land and sea : and that, though they live 
on a distant plot of ground, they are no more to consider 
themselves therefore disfranchised from their native 
land, than the sailors of her fleets do, because they 
float on distant waves. So that literally, these colonies 
must be fastened fleets ; and every man of them must 
be under authority of captains and officers, whose better 
command is to be over fields and streets instead of ships 
of the line; and England, in these her motionless 
navies (or, in the true and mightiest sense, motionless 
churches, ruled by pilots on the Galilean lake * of all 
the world), is to "expect every man to do his duty";^ 
recognizing that duty is indeed possible no less in peace 
than war; and that if we can get men, for little pay, 
to cast themselves against cannon-mouths for love of 
England, we may find men also who will plough and 
sow for her, who will behave kindly and righteously for 
her, who will bring up their children to love her, and 
who will gladden themselves in the brightness of her 
glory, more than in all the light of tropic skies. 

But that they may be able to do this, she must make 
her own majesty stainless ; she must give them thoughts 
of their home of which they can be proud. The Eng- 
land who is to be mistress of half the earth, cannot re- 
main herself a heap of cinders, trampled by contending 

1 Lyeidas, 109. 

' Nelson's famous signal at Trafalgar. 



INAUGURAL 247 

and miserable crowds ; she must yet again become the 
England she was once, and in all beautiful ways, — 
more : so happy, so secluded, and so pure, that in her 
sky — polluted by no unholy clouds — she may be 
able to spell rightly of every star that heaven doth show ; 
and in her fields, ordered and wide and fair, of every 
herb that sips the dew ; ^ and under the green avenues 
of her enchanted garden, a sacred Circe, true Daughter 
of the Sun, she must guide the human arts, and gather 
the divine knowledge, of distant nations, transformed 
from savageness to manhood, and redeemed from de- 
spairing into Peace. 

You think that an impossible ideal. Be it so ; refuse 
to accept it if you will ; but see that you form your own 
in its stead. All that I ask of you is to have a fixed pur- 
pose of some kind for your country and yourselves ; no 
matter how restricted, so that it be fixed and unselfish. 
I know what stout hearts are in you, to answer acknow- 
ledged need ; but it is the fatallest form of error in Eng- 
lish youth to hide their hardihood till it fades for lack 
of sunshine, and to act in disdain of purpose, till all 
purpose is vain. It is not by deliberate, but by careless 
selfishness; not by compromise with evil, but by dull 
following of good, that the weight of national evil in- 
creases upon us daily. Break through at least this pre- 
tence of existence; determine what you will be, and 
what you would w^in. You will not decide wrongly if 
you resolve to decide at all. Were even the choice be- 
tween lawless pleasure and loyal suffering, you w^ould 
not, I believe, choose basely. But your trial is not so 
sharp. It is between drifting in confused wreck among 
the castaways of Fortune, who condemns to assured 
ruin those who know not either how to resist her, or 
^ Milton's II Penseroso, 170 ff. 



248 LECTURES ON ART 

obey ; between this, I say, and the taking of your ap- 
pointed part in the heroism of Rest; the resolving to 
share in the victory which is to the weak rather than 
the strong; and the binding yourselves by that law, 
which, thought on through lingering night and labour- 
ing day, makes a man's life to be as a tree planted by 
the water-side, that bringeth forth his fruit in his sea- 
son ; — 

"et folium ejus non defluet, 

ET OMNIA, QU^CUNQUE FACIET, PROSPERABUNTUR." ^ 



THE RELATION OF ART TO MORALS 

And now I pass to the arts with which I have special 
concern, in which, though the facts are exactly the 
same, I shall have more difficulty in proving my asser- 
tion, because very few of us are as cognizant of the 
merit of painting as we are of that of language ; and I 
can only show you whence that merit springs, after 
having thoroughly shown you in what it consists. But, 
in the meantime, I have simply to tell you, that the 
manual arts are as accurate exponents of ethical state, 
as other modes of expression ; first, with absolute pre- 
cision, of that of the workman ; and then with preci- 
sion, disguised by many distorting influences, of that 
of the nation to which it belongs. 

And, first, they are a perfect exponent of the mind of 
the workman : but, being so, remember, if the mind be 
great or complex, the art is not an easy book to read ; 
for we must ourselves possess all the mental characters 
of which we are to read the signs. No man can read 
the evidence of labour who is not himself laborious, 

1 Psalms i, 3. 



ART AND MORALS 249 

for he does not know what the work cost: nor can he 
read the evidence of true passion if he is not passionate ; 
nor of gentleness if he is not gentle : and the most subtle 
signs of fault and weakness of character he can only 
judge by having had the same faults to fight with. I 
myself, for instance, know impatient work, and tired 
work, better than most critics, because I am myself 
always impatient, and often tired : — so also, the pa- 
tient and indefatigable touch of a mighty master be- 
comes more wonderful to me than to others. Yet, won- 
derful in no mean measure it will be to you all, when I 
make it manifest ; — and as soon as we begin our real 
work, and you have learned what it is to draw a true 
line, I shall be able to make manifest to you, — and 
undisputably so, — that the day's work of a man like 
Mantegna or Paul Veronese consists of an unfaltering, 
uninterrupted, succession of movements of the hand 
more precise than those of the finest fencer : the pencil 
leaving one point and arriving at another, not only with 
unerring precision at the extremity of the line, but with 
an unerring and yet varied course — sometimes over 
spaces a foot or more in extent — yet a course so de- 
termined everywhere that either of these men could, 
and Veronese often does, draw a finished profile, or 
any other portion of the contour of the face, with one 
line, not afterwards changed. Try, first, to realize to 
yourselves the muscular precision of that action, and 
the intellectual strain of it ; for the movement of a fencer 
is perfect in practised monotony ; but the movement of 
the hand of a great painter is at every instant governed 
by direct and new intention. Then imagine that mus- 
cular firmness and subtlety, and the instantaneously 
selective and ordinant energy of the brain, sustained 
all day long, not only without fatigue, but with a visible 



250 LECTURES ON ART 

joy in the exertion, like that which an eagle seems to 
take in the wave of his wings ; and this all life long, and 
through long life, not only without failure of power, but 
with visible increase of it, until the actually organic 
changes of old age. And then consider, so far as you 
know anything of physiology, what sort of an ethical 
state of body and mind that means ! — ethic through 
ages past ! what fineness of race there must be to get 
it, what exquisite balance and symmetry of the vital 
powers! And then, finally, determine for yourselves 
whether a manhood like that is consistent with any 
viciousness of soul, with any mean anxiety, any gnaw- 
ing lust, any wretchedness of spite or remorse, any con- 
sciousness of rebellion against law of God or man, or 
any actual, though unconscious violation of even the 
least law to which obedience is essential for the glory 
of life, and the pleasing of its Giver. 

It is, of course, true that many of the strong masters 
had deep faults of character, but their faults always 
show in their work. It is true that some could not gov- 
ern their passions; if so, they died young, or they 
painted ill when old. But the greater part of our mis- 
apprehension in the whole matter is from our not hav- 
ing well known who the great painters were, and taking 
delight in the petty skill that was bred in the fumes of 
the taverns of the North, instead of theirs who breathed 
empyreal air, sons of the morning, under the woods 
of Assisi and the crags of Cadore. 

It is true however also, as I have pointed out long 
ago, that the strong masters fall into two great divisions, 
one leading simple and natural lives, the other re- 
strained in a Puritanism of the worship of beauty ; and 
these two manners of life you may recognize in a mo- 
ment by their work. Generally the naturalists are the 



ART AND MORALS 251 

strongest ; but there are two of the Puritans, whose work 
if I can succeed in making clearly understandable to 
you during my three years ^ here, it is all I need care to 
do. But of these two Puritans one I cannot name to 
you, and the other I at present will not. One I cannot, 
for no one knows his name, except the baptismal one, 
Bernard, or "dear little Bernard" — Bernardino, 
called from his birthplace, (Luino, on the Lago Mag- 
giore,) Bernard of Luino. The other is a Venetian, of 
whom many of you probably have never heard, and of 
whom, through me, you shall not hear, until I have 
tried to get some picture by him over to England. 

Observe then, this Puritanism in the worship of 
beauty, though sometimes weak, is always honourable 
and amiable, and the exact reverse of the false Puritan- 
ism, which consists in the dread or disdain of beauty. 
And in order to treat my subject rightly, I ought to 
proceed from the skill of art to the choice of its subject, 
and show you how the moral temper of the workman 
is shown by his seeking lovely forms and thoughts to 
express, as well as by the force of his hand in expres- 
sion. But I need not now urge this part of the proof on 
you, because you are already, I believe, sufficiently con- 
scious of the truth in this matter, and also I have al- 
ready said enough of it in my writings ; whereas I have 
not at all said enough of the infallibleness of fine tech- 
nical work as a proof of every other good power. And 
indeed it was long before I myself understood the true 
meaning of the pride of the greatest men in their mere 
execution, shown for a permanent lesson to us, in the 
stories which, whether true or not, indicate with abso- 
lute accuracy the general conviction of great artists ; — 

^ As Slade Professor, Ruskin held a three years' appointment at 
Oxlord. 



252 LECTURES ON ART 

the stories of the contest of Apelles and Protogenes ^ 
in a Hne only, (of which I can promise you, you shall 
know the meaning to some purpose in a little while), — 
the story of the circle of Giotto,^ and especially, which 
you may perhaps not have observed, the expression of 
Diirer in his inscription on the drawings sent him by 
Raphael. These figures, he says, " Raphael drew and 
sent to Albert Diirer in Nurnberg, to show him " — 
What ? Not his invention, nor his beauty of expression, 
but "sein Hand zu weisen," "to show him his ha7id." 
And you will find, as you examine farther, that all in- 
ferior artists are continually trying to escape from the 
necessity of sound work, and either indulging them- 
selves in their delights in subject, or pluming them- 
selves on their noble motives for attempting what they 
cannot perform ; (and observe, by the way, that a great 
deal of what is mistaken for conscientious motive is 
nothing but a very pestilent, because very subtle, con- 
dition of vanity) ; whereas the great men always under- 
stand at once that the first morality of a painter, as of 
everybody else, is to know his business ; and so earnest 
are they in this, that many, whose lives you would 
think, by the results of their work, had been passed in 
strong emotion, have in reality subdued themselves, 
though capable of the very strongest passions, into a 
calm as absolute as that of a deeply sheltered mountain 
lake, which reflects every agitation of the clouds in the 
sky, and every change of the shadows on the hills, but 
is itself motionless. 

1 This story comes from Pliny, Natural History, 35. 36; the 
two rival painters alternately showing their skill by the drawing 
of lines of increasing fineness. 

2 This story comes from Vasari's Lives of the Painters. See Blash- 
field and Hopkins's ed. vol. 1, p. 61. Giotto was asked by a mes- 
senger of the Pope for a specimen of his work, and sent a perfect 
circle, drawn free hand. 



ART AND MORALS 253 

Finally, you must remember that great obscurity 
has been brought upon the truth in this matter by the 
want of integrity and simpHcity in our modern life. I 
mean integrity in the Latin sense, wholeness. Every- 
thing is broken up, and mingled in confusion, both in 
our habits and thoughts ; besides being in great part 
imitative : so that you not only cannot tell what a man 
is, but sometimes you cannot tell whether he is, at all ! 
— whether you have indeed to do with a spirit, or only 
with an echo. And thus the same inconsistencies ap- 
pear now, between the work of artists of merit and 
their personal characters, as those which you find con- 
tinually disappointing expectation in the lives of men 
of modern literary power ; — the same conditions of so- 
ciety having obscured or misdirected the best qualities 
of the imagination, both in our literature and art. Thus 
there is no serious question with any of us as to the per- 
sonal character of Dante and Giotto, of Shakspere 
and Holbein ; but we pause timidly in the attempt to 
analyze the moral laws of the art skill in recent poets, 
novelists, and painters. ^ 

Let me assure you once for all, that as you grow v 
older, if you enable yourselves to distinguish by the 
truth of your own lives, what is true in those of other 
men, you will gradually perceive that all good has its 
origin in good, never in evil ; that the fact of either lit- 
erature or painting being truly fine of their kind, what- 
ever their mistaken aim, or partial error, is proof of 
their noble origin : and that, if there is indeed sterling / 
value in the thing done, it has come of a sterling worth 
in the soul that did it, however alloyed or defiled by 
conditions of sin which are sometimes more appalling 
or more strange than those which all may detect in 
their own hearts, because they are part of a personality 



254 LECTURES ON ART 

altogether larger than ours, and as far beyond our 
judgment in its darkness as beyond our following in 
its light. And it is sufficient warning against what 
some might dread as the probable effect of such a con- 
viction on your own minds, namely, that you might 
permit yourselves in the weaknesses which you im- 
agined to be allied to genius, when they took the form 
of personal temptations ; — it is surely, I say, sufficient 
warning against so mean a folly, to discern, as you may 
with little pains, that, of all human existences, the 
lives of men of that distorted and tainted nobility of 
intellect are probably the most miserable. 

^ I pass to the second, and for us the more practically 
important question. What is the effect of noble art upon 
other men; what has it done for national morality in 
time past : and what effect is the extended knowledge 
or possession of it likely to have upon us now.^^ And 
here we are at once met by the facts, which are as 
gloomy as indisputable, that, while many peasant 
populations, among whom scarcely the rudest practice 
of art has ever been attempted, have lived in compara- 
tive innocence, honour, and happiness, the worst foul- 
ness and cruelty of savage tribes have been frequently 
associated with fine ingenuities of decorative design; 
also, that no people has ever attained the higher stages 
of art skill, except at a period of its civilization which 
was sullied by frequent, violent, and even monstrous 
crime ; and, lastly, that the attaining of perfection in art 
power, has been hitherto, in every nation, the accurate 
signal of the beginning of its ruin. 

/ Respecting which phenomena, observe first, that 
although good never springs out of evil, it is developed 
to its highest by contention with evil. There are some 
groups of peasantry, in far-away nooks of Christian 



ART AND MORALS 255 

countries, who are nearly as innocent as lambs ; but the 
morality which gives power to art is the morality of 
men, not of cattle. 

Secondly, the virtues of the inhabitants of many 
country districts are apparent, not real ; their lives are 
indeed artless, but not innocent; and it is only the 
monotony of circumstances, and the absence of tempta- 
tion, which prevent the exhibition of evil passions not 
less real because often dormant, nor less foul because 
shown only in petty faults, or inactive malignities. 

But you will observe also that absolute artlessness, 
to men in any kind of moral health, is impossible; 
they have always, at least, the art by which they live 
— agriculture or seamanship; and in these industries, 
skilfully practised, you will find the law of their moral 
training; while, whatever the adversity of circum- 
stances, every rightly-minded peasantry, such as that 
of Sweden, Denmark, Bavaria, or Switzerland, has as- 
sociated with its needful industry a quite studied school 
of pleasurable art in dress; and generally also in song, 
and simple domestic architecture. 

Again, I need not repeat to you here what I en- 
deavoured to explain in the first lecture in the book 
I called The Two Paths, respecting the arts of savage 
races : but I may now note briefly that such arts are the 
result of an intellectual activity which has found no 
room to expand, and which the tyranny of nature or 
of man has condemned to disease through arrested 
growth. And where neither Christianity, nor any other 
religion conveying some moral help, has reached, the 
animal energy of such races necessarily flames into 
ghastly conditions of evil, and the grotesque or fright- 
ful forms assumed by their art are precisely indicative 
of their distorted moral nature. 



256 LECTURES ON ART 

But the truly great nations nearly always begin 
from a race possessing this imaginative power; and 
for some time their progress is very slow, and their 
state not one of innocence, but of feverish and faultful 
animal energy. This is gradually subdued and exalted 
into bright human life; the art instinct purifying itself 
with the rest of the nature, until social perfectness is 
nearly reached ; and then comes the period when con- 
science and intellect are so highly developed, that new 
forms of error begin in the inability to fulfil the de- 
mands of the one, or to answer the doubts of the other. 
Then the wholeness of the people is lost; all kinds of 
hypocrisies and oppositions of science develope them- 
selves ; their faith is questioned on one side, and com- 
promised with on the other ; wealth commonly increases 
at the same period to a destructive extent; luxury 
follows; and the ruin of the nation is then certain: 
while the arts, all this time, are simply, as I said at first, 
the exponents of each phase of its moral state, and no 
more control it in its political career than the gleam 
of the firefly guides its oscillation. It is true that their 
most splendid results are usually obtained in the swift- 
ness of the power which is hurrying to the precipice; 
but to lay the charge of the catastrophe to the art by 
which it is illumined, is to find a cause for the cataract 
in the hues of its iris. It is true that the colossal vices 
belonging to periods of great national wealth (for 
wealth, you will find, is the real root of all evil) ^ can 
turn every good gift and skill of nature or of man 
to evil purpose. If, in such times, fair pictures have 
been misused, how much more fair realities? And if 
Miranda is immoral to Caliban is that Miranda's 
fault ? 

' 1 Timothy vi, 10. 



ART AND USE 257 



THE RELATION OF ART TO USE 

Our subject of inquiry to-day, you will remember, 
is the mode in which fine art is founded upon, or may 
contribute to, the practical requirements of human life. 

Its offices in this respect are mainly twofold : it 
gives Form to knowledge, and Grace to utility; that 
is to say, it makes permanently visible to us things 
which otherwise could neither be described by our 
science, nor retained by our memory; and it gives de- 
lightfulness and worth to the implements of daily use, 
and materials of dress, furniture and lodging. In the 
first of these offices it gives precision and charm to 
truth; in the second it gives precision and charm to 
service. For, the moment we make anything useful 
thoroughly, it is a law of nature that we shall be pleased 
with ourselves, and with the thing we have made; and 
become desirous therefore to adorn or complete it, in 
some dainty way, with finer art expressive of our plea- 
sure. 

And the point I wish chiefly to bring before you to- 
day is this close and healthy connection of the fine 
arts with material use; but I must first try briefly to 
put in clear light the function of art in giving Form to 
truth. 

Much that I have hitherto tried to teach has been 
disputed on the ground that I have attached too much 
importance to art as representing natural facts, and too 
little to it as a source of pleasure. And I wish, in the 
close of these four prefatory lectures, strongly to assert 
to you, and, so far as I can in the time, convince you, 
that the entire vitality of art depends upon its being 
either full of truth, or full of use; and that, however 



258 LECTURES ON ART 

pleasant, wonderful, or impressive it may be in itself, it 
must yet be of inferior kind, and tend to deeper inferi- 
ority, unless it has clearly one of these main objects, — 
either to state a true thing, or to adorn a serviceable one. 
It must never exist alone, — never for itself; it exists 
rightly only when it is the means of knowledge, or the 
grace of agency for life. 

Now, I pray you to observe — for though I have 
said this often before, I have never yet said it clearly 
enough — every good piece of art, to whichever of 
these ends it may be directed, involves first essentially 
the evidence of human skill, and the formation of an 
actually beautiful thing by it. 

Skill and beauty, always, then; and, beyond these, 
the formative arts have always one or other of the two 
objects which I have just defined to you — truth, 
or serviceableness ; and without these aims neither the 
skill nor their beauty will avail; only by these can 
either legitimately reign. All the graphic arts begin 
in keeping the outline of shadow that we have loved, 
and they end in giving to it the aspect of life; and all 
the architectural arts begin in the shaping of the cup 
and the platter, and they end in a glorified roof. 

Therefore, you see, in the graphic arts you have 
Skill, Beauty, and Likeness; and in the architectural 
arts Skill, Beauty, and Use : and you must have the three 
in each group, balanced and co-ordinate; and all the 
chief errors of art consist in losing or exaggerating one 
of these elements. 

For instance, almost the whole system and hope 
of modern life are founded on the notion that you may 
substitute mechanism for skill, photograph for picture, 
cast-iron for sculpture. That is your main nineteenth- 
century faith, or infidelity. You think you can get 



ART AND USE 259 

everything by grinding — music, literature, and paint- 
.ing. You will find it grievously not so; you can get 
nothing but dust by mere grinding. Even to have the 
barley-meal out of it, you must have the barley first; 
and that comes by growth, not grinding. But essen- 
tially, we have lost our delight in Skill ; in that majesty 
of it which I was trying to make clear to you in my last 
address, and which long ago^ I tried to express, under 
the head of ideas of power. The entire sense of that, 
we have lost, because we ourselves do not take pains 
enough to do right, and have no conception of what the 
right costs ; so that all the joy and reverence we ought 
to feel in looking at a strong man's work have ceased 
in us. We keep them yet a little in looking at a honey- 
comb or a bird's-nest; we understand that these differ, 
by divinity of skill, from a lump of wax or a cluster of 
sticks. But a picture, which is a much more wonderful 
thing than a honeycomb or a bird's-nest, — have we 
not known people, and sensible people too, who ex- 
pected to be taught to produce that, in six lessons ? 

Well, you must have the skill, you must have the 
beauty, which is the highest moral element; and then, 
lastly, you must have the verity or utility, which is not 
the moral, but the vital element ; and this desire for 
verity and use is the one aim of the three that always 
leads in great schools, and in the minds of great masters, 
without any exception. They will permit themselves 
in awkwardness, they will permit themselves in ugliness ; 
— but they will never permit themselves in uselessness 
or in un veracity. 

And farther, as their skill increases, and as their 
grace, so much more their desire for truth. It is im- 
possible to find the three motives in fairer balance and 
^ In Modern Painters, vol. 1. 



260 LECTURES ON ART 

harmony than in our own Reynolds. He rejoices in 
showing you his skill; and those of you who succeed 
in learning what painters' work really is, will one day 
rejoice also, even to laughter — that highest laughter 
which springs of pure delight, in watching the fortitude 
and the fire of a hand which strikes forth its will upon 
the canvas as easily as the wind strikes it on the sea. 
He rejoices in all abstract beauty and rhythm and 
melody of design ; he will never give you a colour that 
is not lovely, nor a shade that is unnecessary, nor a line 
that is ungraceful. But all his power and all his in- 
vention are held by him subordinate, — and the more 
obediently because of their nobleness, — to his true 
leading purpose of setting before you such likeness of 
the living presence of an English gentleman or an 
English lady, as shall be worthy of being looked upon 
for ever. 

But farther, you remember, I hope — for I said it 
in a way that I thought would shock you a little, that 
you might remember it — my statement, that art had 
never done more than this, never more than given the 
likeness of a noble human being. Not only so, but it 
very seldom does so much as this, and the best pictures 
that exist of the great schools are all portraits, or groups 
of portraits, often of very simple and nowise noble 
persons. You may have much more brilliant and im- 
pressive qualities in imaginative pictures ; you may have 
figures scattered like clouds, or garlanded like flowers ; 
you may have light and shade as of a tempest, and 
colour, as of the rainbow; but all that is child's play to 
the great men, though it is astonishment to us. Their 
real strength is tried to the utmost, and as far as I 
know, it is never elsewhere brought out so thoroughly, 
as in painting one man or woman, and the soul that 



ART AND USE 261 

was in them; nor that always the highest soul, but 
often only a thwarted one that was capable of height ; 
or perhaps not even that, but faultful and poor, yet seen 
through, to the poor best of it, by the masterful sight. 
So that in order to put before you in your Standard 
series the best art possible, I am obliged, even from 
the very strongest men, to take the portraits, before I 
take the idealism. Nay, whatever is best in the great 
compositions themselves has depended on portraiture ; 
and the study necessary to enable you to understand 
invention will also convince you that the mind of man 
never invented a greater thing than the form of man, 
animated by faithful life. Every attempt to refine or 
exalt such healthy humanity has weakened or carica- 
tured it ; or else consists only in giving it, to please our 
fancy, the wings of birds, or the eyes of antelopes. 
Whatever is truly great in either Greek or Christian 
art, is also restrictedly human; and even the raptures 
of the redeemed souls who enter " celestemente bal- 
lando," ^ the gate of Angelico's Paradise, were seen 
first in the terrestrial, yet most pure, mirth of Florentine 
maidens. 

I am aware that this cannot but at present appear 
gravely questionable to those of my audience who are 
strictly cognizant of the phases of Greek art ; for they 
know that the moment of its decline is accurately 
marked, by its turning from abstract form to portraiture. 
But the reason of this is simple. The progressive course 
of Greek art was in subduing monstrous conceptions 
to natural ones ; it did this by general laws ; it reached 
absolute truth of generic human form, and if its eth- 

^ The quotation is from Vasari's account of Angelico's Last 
Judgment (now in the Accademia at Florence). [Cook and Wed- 
derburn.l 



262 LECTURES ON ART 

ical force had remained, would have advanced into 
healthy portraiture. But at the moment of change the 
national life ended in Greece; and portraiture, there, 
meant insult to her religion, and flattery to her tyrants. 
And her skill perished, not because she became true 
in sight, but because she became vile in heart. . . . 

But I have told you enough, it seems to me, at least 
to-day, of this function of art in recording fact ; let me 
now finally, and with all distinctness possible to me, 
state to you its main business of all ; — its service in 
the actual uses of daily life. 

You are surprised, perhaps, to hear me call this its 
^ main business. That is indeed so, however. The giving 
brightness to picture is much, but the giving brightness 
to life more. And remember, were it as patterns only, 
you cannot, without the realities, have the pictures. 
You cannot have a landscape by Turner without a 
country for him to paint; you caniiot have a portrait by 
Titian, without a man to bepourtrayed. I need not prove 
that to you, I suppose, in these short terms ; but in the 
outcome I can get no soul to believe that the beginning 
of art is in getting our country clean, and our people 
beautiful. I have been ten years trying to get this very 
plain certainty — I do not say believed — but even 
thought of, as anything but a monstrous proposition. 
To get your country clean, and your people lovely; — 
I assure you that is a necessary work of art to begin with ! 
U There has indeed been art in countries where people 
lived in dirt to serve God, but never in countries where 
they lived in dirt to serve the devil. There has indeed 
been art where the people were not all lovely, — where 
even their lips were thick — and their skins black, 
because the sun had looked upon them ; ^ but never in a 
^ Song of Solomon i, 6. 



ART AND USE 263 

country where the people were pale with miserable toil 
and deadly shade, and where the lips of youth, instead 
of being full with blood, were pinched by famine, or 
warped with poison. And now, therefore, note this 
well, the gist of all these long prefatory talks. I said 
that the two great moral instincts were those of Order 
and Kindness. Now, all the arts are founded on agri- 
culture by the hand, and on the graces and kindness 
of feeding, and dressing, and lodging your people. 
Greek art begins in the gardens of Alcinous — perfect 
order, leeks in beds, and fountains in pipes. ^ And 
Christian art, as it arose out of chivalry, was only 
possible so far as chivalry compelled both kings and 
knights to care for the right personal training of their 
people; it perished utterly when those kings and 
knights became Srjfxo^opoL, devourers of the people. 
And it will become possible again only, when, literally, 
the sword is beaten into the ploughshare,^ when your 
St. George of England shall justify his name,^ and 
Christian art shall be known as its Master was, in 
breaking of bread.'' 

Now look at the working out of this broad principle 
in minor detail; observe how, from highest to lowest, 
health of art has first depended on reference to indus- 
trial use. There is first the need of cup and platter, 
especially of cup; for you can put your meat on the 
Harpies',^ or any other, tables; but you must have 
your cup to drink from. And to hold it conveniently, 
you must put a handle to it; and to fill it when it is 

^ Cf. Classical Landscape, pp. 92-93. 
^ Isaiah ii, 4; Micah iv, 3; Joel iii, 10. 

3 The name of St. George, the " Earth worker," or "Husband- 
man." [Ruskin.] 
* Luke xxiv, 35. 
6 Virgil, ^neid, 3, 209. seqq. [Ruskin.] 



264 LECTURES ON ART 

empty you must have a large pitcher of some sort ; and 
to carry the pitcher you may most advisably have two 
handles. Modify the forms of these needful posses- 
sions according to the various requirements of drinking 
largely and drinking delicately ; of pouring easily out, 
or of keeping for years the perfume in; of storing in 
cellars, or bearing from fountains; of sacrificial liba- 
tion, of Pan-athenaic treasure of oil, and sepulchral 
treasure of ashes, — and you have a resultant series 
of beautiful form and decoration, from the rude am- 
phora of red earth up to Cellini's vases of gems and 
crystal, in which series, but especially in the more sim- 
ple conditions of it, are developed the most beautiful 
lines and most perfect types of severe composition 
which have yet been attained by art. 

But again, that you may fill your cup with pure 
water, you must go to the well or spring ; you need a 
fence round the well ; you need some tube or trough, 
or other means of confining the stream at the spring. 
For the conveyance of the current to any distance you 
must build either enclosed or open aqueduct; and in 
the hot square of the city where you set it free, you 
find it good for health and pleasantness to let it leap 
into a fountain. On these several needs you have a 
school of sculpture founded ; in the decoration of the 
walls of wells in level countries, and of the sources of 
springs in mountainous ones, and chiefly of all, where 
the women of household or market meet at the city 
fountain. 

There is, however, a farther reason for the use of art 
here than in any other material service, so far as we 
may, by art, express our reverence or thankfulness. 
Whenever a nation is in its right mind, it always has 
a deep sense of divinity in the gift of rain from heaven, 



ART AND USE ^65 

filling its heart with food and gladness ; ^ and all the 
more when that gift becomes gentle and perennial in 
the flowing of springs. It literally is not possible that 
any fruitful power of the Muses should be put forth 
upon a people which disdains their Helicon; still less 
is it possible that any Christian nation should grow up 
"tanquam lignum quod plantatum est secus decursus 
aquarum," ^ which cannot recognize the lesson meant 
in their being told of the places where Rebekah was 
met ; — where Rachel, — where Zipporah, — and she 
who was asked for water under Mount Gerizim by a 
Stranger, weary, who had nothing to draw with.^ 

And truly, when our mountain springs are set apart 
in vale or craggy glen, or glade of wood green through 
the drought of summer, far from cities, then, it is best 
let them stay in their own happy peace ; but if near 
towns, and liable therefore to be defiled by common 
usage, we could not use the loveliest art more worthily 
than by sheltering the spring and its first pools with 
precious marbles : nor ought anything to be esteemed 
more important, as a means of healthy education, than 
the care to keep the streams of it afterwards, to as 
great a distance as possible, pure, full of fish, and easily 
accessible to children. There used to be, thirty years 
ago, a little rivulet of the Wandel, about an inch deep, 
which ran over the carriage-road and under a foot- 
bridge just under the last chalk hill near Croydon. 
Alas ! men came and went ; and it — did not go on for 
ever. It has long since been bricked over by the parish 
authorities; but there was more education in that 
stream with its minnows than you could get out of a 

^ Acts xiv, 17. 

2 Psalms i, 3. 

3 Genesis xxiv, 15, 16 and xxix, 10; Exodus ii, 16; John iv, 11. 



26S LECTURES ON ART 

thousand pounds spent yearly in the parish schools, 
even though you were to spend every farthing of it in 
teaching the nature of oxygen and hydrogen, and the 
names, and rate per minute, of all the rivers in Asia 
and America. 

Well, the gist of this matter lies here then. Suppose 
we want a school of pottery again in England, all we 
poor artists are ready to do the best we can, to show 
you how pretty a line may be that is twisted first to 
one side, and then to the other ; and how a plain house- 
hold-blue will make a pattern on white ; and how ideal 
art may be got out of the spaniel's colours of black and 
tan. But I tell you beforehand, all that we can do will 
be utterly useless, unless you teach your peasant to say 
grace, not only before meat, but before drink; and 
having provided him with Greek cups and platters, 
provide him also with something that is not poisoned 
to put into them. 

There cannot be any need that I should trace for 
you the conditions of art that are directly founded on 
serviceableness of dress, and of armour; but it is my 
duty to affirm to you, in the most positive manner, that 
after recovering, for the poor, wholesomeness of food, 
your next step toward founding schools of art in Eng- 
land must be in recovering, for the poor, decency and 
wholesomeness of dress ; thoroughly good in substance, 
fitted for their daily work, becoming to their rank in 
life, and worn with order and dignity. And this order 
and dignity must be taught them by the women of the 
upper and middle classes, whose minds can be in no- 
thing right, as long as they are so wrong in this matter 
as to endure the squalor of the poor, while they them- 
selves dress gaily. And on the proper pride and com- 
fort of both poor and rich in dress, must be founded 



ART AND USE 267 

the true arts of dress ; carried on by masters of manu- 
facture no less careful of the perfectness and beauty 
of their tissues, and of all that in substance and in 
design can be bestowed upon them, than ever the 
armourers of Milan and Damascus were careful of 
their steel. 

Then, in the third place, having recovered some 
wholesome habits of life as to food and dress, we must 
recover them as to lodging. I said just now that the 
best architecture was but a glorified roof. Think of it. 
The dome of the Vatican, the porches of Rheims or 
Chartres, the vaults and arches of their aisles, the 
canopy of the tomb, and the spire of the belfry, are all 
forms resulting from the mere requirement that a cer- 
tain space shall be strongly covered from heat and 
rain. More than that — as I have tried all through 
The Stones of Venice to show — the lovely forms of 
these were every one of them developed in civil and 
domestic building, and only after their invention 
employed ecclesiastically on the grandest scale. 1 
think you cannot but have noticed here in Oxford, as 
elsewhere, that our modern architects never seem to 
know what to do with their roofs. Be assured, until the 
roofs are right, nothing else will be ; and there are just 
two ways of keeping them right. Never build them of 
iron, but only of wood or stone; and secondly, take 
care that in every town the little roofs are built before 
the large ones, and that everybody who wants one has 
got one. And- we must try also to make everybody 
want one. That is to say, at some not very advanced 
period of life, men should desire to have a home, which 
they do not wish to quit any more, suited to their habits 
of life, and likely to be more and more suitable to them 
until their death. And men must desire to have these 



268 LECTURES ON ART 

their dwelling-places built as strongly as possible, and 
furnished and decorated daintily, and set in pleasant 
places, in bright light, and good air, being able to 
choose for themselves that at least as well as swallows. 
And when the houses are grouped together in cities, 
men must have so much civic fellowship as to subject 
their architecture to a common law, and so much civic 
pride as to desire that the whole gathered group of 
human dwellings should be a lovely thing, not a fright- 
ful one, on the face of the earth. Not many weeks ago 
an English clergyman,^ a master of this University, a 
man not given to sentiment, but of middle age, and 
great practical sense, told me, by accident, anc} wholly 
without reference to the subject now before us, that he 
never could enter London from his country parsonage 
but with closed eyes, lest the sight of the blocks of 
houses which the railroad intersected in the sub- 
urbs should unfit him, by the horror of it, for his day's 
work. 

Now, it is not possible — and I repeat to you, only 
in more deliberate assertion, what I wrote just twenty- 
two years ago in the last chapter of the Seven Lamps 
of Architecture — it is not possible to have any right 
morality, happiness, or art, in any country where the 
cities are thus built, or thus, let me rather say, clotted 
and coagulated ; spots of a dreadful mildew, spreading 
by patches and blotches over the country they con- 
sume. You must have lovely cities, crystallized, not 
coagulated, into form; limited in size, and not casting 
out the scum and scurf of them into an encircling 
eruption of shame, but girded each with its sacred 
pomoerium, and with garlands of gardens full of blos- 
soming trees and softly guided streams. 
^ Osborne Gordon. [Ruskin.] 



ART AND HISTORY 

ATHENA ERGANE 

This short selection is taken from the volume entitled 
The Queen of the Ah\ in which Ruskin, fascinated by the 
deep significance of the Greek myths and realizing the reli- 
gious sincerity underlying them, attempts to interpret those 
that cluster about Athena. The book was published June 
22, 1869. It is divided into three "Lectures," parts of 
which actually were delivered as lectures on different occa- 
sions, entitled respectively " Athena Chalinitis " (Athena 
in the Heavens), " Athena Keramitis " (Athena in the 
Earth), "Athena Ergane" (Athena in the Heart). The first 
lecture is the only one which keeps to the title of the book ; 
in the others the legend is used merely as a starting-point 
for the expression of various pregnant ideas on social and 
historical problems. The book as a whole abounds in flashes 
of inspiration and insight, and is a favourite with many 
readers of Ruskin. Carlyle, in a letter to Froude, wrote : 
" Passages of that last book, Queen of the Air, went into 
my heart like arrows." 

In different places of my writings, and through many 
years of endeavour to define the laws of art, I have 
insisted on this rightness in work, and on its connection 
with virtue of character, in so many partial ways, that 
the impression left on the reader's mind — if, indeed, 
it was ever impressed at all — has been confused and 
uncertain. In beginning the series of my corrected 
works, I wish this principle (in my own mind the foun- 
dation of every other) to be made plain, if nothing 
else is : and will try, therefore, to make it so, so far as, 
by any effort, I can put it into unmistakable words. 
And, first, here is a very simple statement of it, given 



270 ART AND HISTORY 

lately in a lecture on the Architecture of the Valley of 
the Somme,^ which will be better read in this place 
than in its incidental connection with my account of 
the porches of Abbeville. 

I had used, in a preceding part of the lecture, the 
expression, " by what faults " this Gothic architecture 
fell. We continually speak thus of works of art. We 
talk of their faults and merits, as of virtues and vices. 
What do we mean by talking of the faults of a picture, 
or the merits of a piece of stone ? 

The faults of a work of art are the faults of its work- 
man, and its virtues his virtues. 

Great art is the expression of the mind of a great 
man, and mean art, that of the want of mind of a weak 
man. A foolish person builds foolishly, and a wise one, 
sensibly; a virtuous one, beautifully; and a vicious 
one, basely. If stone work is well put together, it means 
that a thoughtful man planned it, and a careful man 
cut it, and an honest man cemented it. If it has too 
much ornament, it means that its carver was too greedy 
of pleasure ; if too little, that he was rude, or insensitive, 
or stupid, and the like. So that when once you have 
learned how to spell these most precious of all legends, 
— pictures and buildings, — you may read the char- 
acters of men, and of nations, in their art, as in a 
mirror; — nay, as in a microscope, and magnified a 
hundredfold; for the character becomes passionate 
in the art, and intensifies itself in all its noblest or 
meanest delights. Nay, not only as in a microscope, 
but as under a scalpel, and in dissection; for a man 
may hide himself from you, or misrepresent himself 
to you, every other way; but he cannot in his work: 

* The Flamboyant Architecture of the Valley of the Somme, a lec- 
ture delivered at the Royal Institution, January 29, 1869. 



ART AND HISTORY 271 

there, be sure, you have him to the inmost. All that he 
likes, all that he sees, — all that he can do, — his im^ 
agination, his affections, his perseverance, his impa- 
tience, his clumsiness, cleverness, everything is there. 
If the work is a cobweb, you know it was made by a 
spider; if a honeycomb, by a bee; a worm-cast is 
thrown up by a worm, and a nest wreathed by a bird ; 
and a house built by a man, worthily, if he is worthy, 
and ignobly, if he is ignoble. 

And always, from the least to the greatest, as the 
made thing is good or bad, so is the maker of it. 

You all use this faculty of judgment more or less, 
whether you theoretically admit the principle or not. 
Take that floral gable ; ^ you don't suppose the man 
who built Stonehenge could have built that, or that the 
man who built that, would have built Stonehenge } Do 
you think an old Roman would have liked such a piece 
of filigree work .^ or that Michael Angelo would have 
spent his time in twisting these stems of roses in and 
out? Or, of modern handicraftsmen, do you think a 
burglar, or a brute, or a pickpocket could have carved 
\i? Could Bill Sykes have done it? or the Dodger, 
dexterous with finger and tool? You will find in the 
end, that no man could have done it hut exactly the man 
who did it; and by looking close at it, you may, if you 
know your letters, read precisely the manner of man 
he was. 

Now I must insist on this matter, for a grave reason. 
Of all facts concerning art, this is the one most neces- 
sary to be known, that, while manufacture is the 
work of hands only, art is the work of the whole spirit 

^ The elaborate pediment above the central porch at the west end 
of Rouen Cathedral, pierced into a transparent web of tracery, and 
enriched with a border of "twisted eglantine." [Ruskin.] 



272 ART AND HISTORY 

of man ; and as that spirit is, so is the deed of it : and 
by whatever power of vice or virtue any art is produced, 
the same vice or virtue it reproduces and teaches. That 
which is born of evil begets evil ; and that which is born 
of valour and honour, teaches valour and honour. All 
art is either infection or education. It must be one or 
other of these. 

This, I repeat, of all truths respecting art, is the one 
of which understanding is the most precious, and denial 
the most deadly. And I assert it the more, because it 
has of late been repeatedly, expressly, and with con- 
tumely denied ; and that by high authority: and I hold 
it one of the most sorrowful facts connected with the 
decline of the arts among us, that English gentlemen, 
of high standing as scholars and artists, should have 
been blinded into the acceptance, and betrayed into 
the assertion of a fallacy which only authority such as 
theirs could have rendered for an instant credible. For 
the contrary of it is written in the history of all great 
nations ; it is the one sentence always inscribed on the 
steps of their thrones; the one concordant voice in 
which they speak to us out of their dust. 

All such nations first manifest themselves as a pure 
and beautiful animal race, with intense energy and 
imagination. They live lives of hardship by choice, 
and by grand instinct of manly discipline : they become 
fierce and irresistible soldiers; the nation is always 
its own army, and their king, or chief head of govern- 
ment, is always their first soldier. Pharaoh, or David, 
or Leonidas, or Valerius, or Barbarossa, or Coeur de 
Lion, or St. Louis, or Dandolo, or Frederick the Great : 
— Egyptian, Jew, Greek, Roman, German, English, 
French, Venetian, — that is inviolable law for them all ; 
their king must be their first soldier, or they cannot be 



ART AND HISTORY 273 

in progressive power. Then, after their great military 
period, comes the domestic period; in which, without 
betraying the discipline of war, they add to their great 
soldiership the delights and possessions of a delicate 
and tender home-life: and then, for all nations, is the 
time of their perfect art, which is the fruit, the evidence, 
the reward of their national ideal of character, devel- 
oped by the finished care of the occupations of peace. 
That is the history of all true art that ever was, or 
can be : palpably the history of it, — unmistakably, — 
written on the forehead of it in letters of light, — in 
tongues of fire, by which the seal of virtue is branded 
as deep as ever iron burnt into a convict's flesh the seal 
of crime. But always, hitherto, after the great period, 
has followed the day of luxury, and pursuit of the arts 
for pleasure only. And all has so ended. 

Thus far of Abbeville building. Now I have here 
asserted two things, — first, the foundation of art in 
moral character; next, the foundation of moral charac- 
ter in war. I must make both these assertions clearer, 
and prove them. 

First, of the foundation of art in moral character. Of 
course art-gift and amiabihty of disposition are two 
different things. A good man is not necessarily a 
painter, nor does an eye for colour necessarily imply an 
honest mind. But great art implies the union of both 
powers: it is the expression, by an art-gift, of a pure 
soul. If the gift is not there, we can have no art at all ; 
and if the soul — and a right soul too — is not there, 
the art is bad, however dexterous. 

But also, remember, that the art-gift itself is only 
the result of the moral character of generations. A bad 
woman may have a sweet voice ; but that sweetness of 
voice comes of the past morality of her race. That she 



274 ART AND HISTORY 

can sing with it at all, she owes to the determination of 
laws of music by the morality of the past. Every act, 
every impulse, of virtue and vice, affects in any crea- 
ture, face, voice, nervous power, and vigour and har- 
mony of invention, at once. Perseverance in rightness 
of human conduct, renders, after a certain number of 
generations, human art possible; every sin clouds it, 
be it ever so little a one ; and persistent vicious living 
and following of pleasure render, after a certain num- 
ber of generations, all art impossible. Men are deceived 
by the long-suffering of the laws of nature ; and mistake, 
in a nation, the reward of the virtue of its sires for the 
issue of its own sins. The time of their visitation will 
come, and that inevitably ; for, it is always true, that if 
the fathers have eaten sour grapes, the children's teeth 
are set on edge.^ And for the individual, as soon as you 
have learned to read, you may, as I have said, know 
him to the heart's core, through his art. Let his art- 
gift be never so great, and cultivated to the height by 
the schools of a great race of men ; and it is still but a 
tapestry thrown over his own being and inner soul ; and 
the bearing of it will show, infallibly, whether it hangs 
on a man, or on a skeleton. If you are dim-eyed, you 
may not see the difference in the fall of the folds at first, 
but learn how to look, and the folds themselves will 
become transparent, and you shall see through them 
the death's shape, or the divine one, making the tissue 
above it as a cloud of Hght, or as a winding-sheet. 

Then farther, observe, I have said (and you will 
find it true, and that to the uttermost) that, as all 
lovely art is rooted in virtue, so it bears fruit of virtue, 
and is didactic in its own nature. It is often didactic 
also in actually expressed thought, as Giotto's, Michael 

^ Jeremiah xxxi, 29. 



ART AND HISTORY 275 

Angelo's, DUrer's, and hundreds more; but that is not 
its special function, — it is didactic chiefly by being 
beautiful ; but beautiful with haunting thought, no less 
than with form, and full of myths that can be read only 
with the heart. 

For instance, at this moment there is open beside me 
as I write, a page of Persian manuscript, wrought with 
wreathed azure and gold, and soft green, and violet, 
and ruby and scarlet, into one field of pure resplend- 
ence. It is wrought to delight the eyes only ; and does 
delight them ; and the man who did it assuredly had 
eyes in his head ; but not much more. It is not didactic 
art, but its author was happy : and it will do the good, 
and the harm, that mere pleasure can do. But, oppo- 
site me, is an early Turner drawing of the lake of 
Geneva, taken about two miles from Geneva, on the 
Lausanne road, with Mont Blanc in the distance. The 
old city is seen lying beyond the waveless waters, veiled 
with a sweet misty veil of Athena's weaving: a faint 
light of morning, peaceful exceedingly, and almost 
colourless, shed from behind the Voirons, increases 
into soft amber along the slope of the Saleve, and is just 
seen, and no more, on the fair warm fields of its sum- 
mit, between the folds of a white cloud that rests upon 
the grass, but rises, high and towerlike, into the zenith 
of dawn above. 

There is not as much colour in that low amber light 
upon the hill-side as there is in the palest dead leaf. The 
lake is not blue, but grey in mist, passing into deep 
shadow beneath the Voirons' pines ; a few dark clusters 
of leaves, a single white flower — scarcely seen — are 
all the gladness given to the rocks of the shore. One 
of the ruby spots of the eastern manuscript would give 
colour enough for all the red that is in Turner's entire 



276 ART AND HISTORY 

drawing. For the mere pleasure of the eye, there is not 
so much in all those lines of his, throughout the entire 
landscape, as in half an inch square of the Persian's 
page. What made him take pleasure in the low colour 
that is only like the brown of a dead leaf "^ in the cold 
grey of dawn — in the one white flower among the 
rocks — in these — and no more than these .^ 

He took pleasure in them because he had been 
bred among English fields and hills ; because the gentle- 
ness of a great race was in his heart, and its power of 
thought in his brain ; because he knew the stories of the 
Alps, and of the cities at their feet ; because he had read 
the Homeric legends of the clouds, and beheld the gods 
of dawn, and the givers of dew to the fields ; because he 
knew the faces of the crags, and the imagery of the 
passionate mountains, as a man knows the face of his 
friend ; because he had in him the wonder and sorrow 
concerning life and death, which are the inheritance of 
the Gothic soul from the days of its first sea kings ; and 
also the compassion and the joy that are woven into 
the innermost fabric of every great imaginative spirit, 
born now in countries that have lived by the Christian 
faith with any courage or truth. And the picture con- 
tains also, for us, just this which its maker had in him 
to give ; and can convey it to us, just so far as we are of 
the temper in which it must be received. It is didactic if 
we are worthy to be taught, no otherwise. The pure 
heart, it will make more pure; the thoughtful, more 
thoughtful. It has in it no words for the reckless or the 
base. 



TRAFFIC 

" Traffic " is the second of the three lectures pub- 
lished May, 1866, in the volume entitled The Croivn of 
Wild Olive. All these lectures were delivered in the years 
1864 and 1865, but the one here printed was earliest. The 
occasion on which Euskin addressed the people of Brad- 
ford is made sufficiently clear from the opening sentences. 
The lecture is important as emphasizing in a popular way 
some of his most characteristic economic theories. 



TRAFFIC 1 

My good Yorkshire friends, you asked me down 
here among your hills that I might talk to you about 
this Exchange you are going to build : but, earnestly 
and seriously asking you to pardon me, I am going to 
do nothing of the kind. I cannot talk, or at least can 
say very little, about this same Exchange. I must 
talk of quite other things, though not willingly ; — I 
could not deserve your pardon, if, when you invited 
me to speak on one subject, I wilfully spoke on an- 
other. But I cannot speak, to purpose, of anything 
about which I do not care; and most simply and sor- 
rowfully I have to tell you, in the outset, that I do not 
care about this Exchange of yours. 

If, however, when you sent me your invitation, I 
had answered, "I won't come, I don't care about the 
Exchange of Bradford," you would have been justly 
offended with me, not knowing the reasons of so blunt 
a carelessness. So I have come down, hoping that 

1 Delivered in the Town Hall, Bradford, April 21, 1864. 



278 TRAFFIC 

you will patiently let me tell you why, on this, and 
many other such occasions, I now remain silent, when 
formerly I should have caught at the opportunity of 
speaking to a gracious audience. 

In a word, then, I do not care about this Exchange — 
because you don't ; and because you know perfectly well 
I cannot make you. Look at the essential conditions 
of the case, which you, as business men, know perfectly 
well, though perhaps you think I forget them. You 
are going to spend <£30,000, which to you, collectively, 
is nothing ; the buying a new coat is, as to the cost of it, 
a much more important matter of consideration to me, 
than building a new Exchange is to you. But you 
think you may as well have the right thing for your 
money. You know there are a great many odd styles 
of architecture about; you don't want to do anything 
ridiculous ; you hear of me, among others, as a respect- 
able architectural man-milliner ; and you send for me, 
that I may tell you the leading fashion ; and what is, in 
our shops, for the moment, the newest and sweetest 
thing in pinnacles. 

Now, pardon me for telling you frankly, you cannot 
have good architecture merely by asking people's ad- 
vice on occasion. All good architecture is the expres- 
sion of national life and character , and it is produced 
by a prevalent and eager national taste, or desire for 
beauty. And I want you to think a little of the deep 
significance of this word "taste"; for no statement of 
mine has been more earnestly or oftener controverted 
than that good taste is essentially a moral quality. 
" No," say many of my antagonists, " taste is one thing, 
morality is another. Tell us what is pretty : we shall be 
glad to know that ; but we need no sermons — even 
were you able to preach them, which may be doubted." 



TRAFFIC 279 

Permit me, therefore, to fortify this old dogma of 
mine somewhat. Taste is not only a part and an index 
of morality; — it is the only morality. The first, and 
last, and closest trial question to any living creature is, 
"What do you like .?" Tell me what you like, and I'll 
tell you what you are. Go out into the street, and ask 
the first man or woman you meet, what their "taste" 
is ; and if they answer candidly, you know them, body 
and soul. "You, my friend in the rags, with the un- 
steady gait, what do you like V "A pipe and a quartern 
of gin." I know you. "You, good woman, with the 
quick step and tidy bonnet, what do you like.'^" "A 
swept hearth, and a clean tea-table ; and my husband 
opposite me, and a baby at my breast." Good, I know 
you also. " You, little girl with the golden hair and the 
soft eyes, what do you like ?" " My canary, and a run 
among the wood hyacinths." "You, little boy with 
the dirty hands, and the low forehead, what do you 
like.'^" "A shy at the sparrows, and a game at pitch 
farthing." Good ; we know them all now. What more 
need we ask.^ 

" Nay," perhaps you answer ; " we need rather to ask 
what these people and children do, than what they 
like. If they do right, it is no matter that they like 
what is wrong; and if they do wrong, it is no matter 
that they like what is right. Doing is the great thing; 
and it does not matter that the man likes drinking, so 
that he does not drink; nor that the little girl likes to 
be kind to her canary, if she will not learn her lessons ; 
nor that the little boy likes throwing stones at the 
sparrows, if he goes to the Sunday school." Indeed, 
for a short time, and in a provisional sense, this is true. 
For if, resolutely, people do what is right, in time they 
come to like doing it. But they only are in a right 



280 TRAFFIC 

moral state when they have come to like doing it ; and 
as long as they don't like it, they are still in a vicious 
state. The man is not in health of body who is always 
thinking of the bottle in the cupboard, though he 
bravely bears his thirst ; but the man who heartily en- 
joys water in the morning, and wine in the evening, 
each in its proper quantity and time. And the entire 
object of true education is to make people not merely 
do the right things, but enjoy the right things : — not 
merely industrious, but to love industry — not merely 
learned, but to love knowledge — not merely pure, but 
to love purity — not merely just, but to hunger and 
thirst after justice.^ 

But you may answer or think, " Is the liking for out- 
side ornaments, — for pictures, or statues, or furniture, 
or architecture, — a moral quality ? " Yes, most surely, 
if a rightly set liking. Taste for any pictures or statues 
is not a moral quality, but taste for good ones is. Only 
here again we have to define the word "good." I 
don't mean by "good," clever — or learned — or 
difficult in the doing. Take a picture by Teniers, 
of sots quarrelling over their dice; it is an entirely 
clever picture; so clever that nothing in its kind has 
ever been done equal to it; but it is also an entirely 
base and evil picture. It is an expression of delight in 
the prolonged contemplation of a vile thing, and de- 
light in that is an "unmannered," or "immoral" 
quality. It is "bad taste" in the profoundest sense — - 
it is the taste of the devils. On the other hand, a pic- 
ture of Titian's, or a Greek statue, or a Greek coin, or 
a Turner landscape, expresses delight in the perpetual 
contemplation of a good and perfect thing. That is an 
entirely moral quality — it is the taste of the angels- 
* Matthew v, 6. 



TRAFFIC 281 

And all delight in art, and all love of it, resolve them- 
selves into simple love of that which deserves love. 
That deserving is the quality which we call "loveli- 
ness" — (we ought to have an opposite word, hateli- 
ness, to be said of the things which deserve to be hated) ; 
and it is not an indifferent nor optional thing whether 
we love this or that ; but it is just the vital function of 
all our being. What we like determines what we are, 
and is the sign of what we are; and to teach taste is 
inevitably to form character. 

As I was thinking over this, in walking up Fleet 
Street the other day, my eye caught the title of a book 
standing open in a bookseller's window. It was — 
"On the necessity of the diffusion of taste among all 
classes." "Ah," I thought to myself, "my classifying 
friend, when you have diffused your taste, where will 
your classes be.^ The man who likes what you like, 
belongs to the same class with you, I think. Inevitably 
so. You may put him to other work if you choose ; but, 
by the condition you have brought him into, he will dis- 
like the other work as much as you would yourself. 
You get hold of a scavenger or a costermonger, who 
enjoyed the Newgate Calendar for literature, and * Pop 
goes the Weasel' for music. You think you can make 
him like Dante and Beethoven .^ I wish you joy of 
your lessons ; but if you do, you have made a gentle- 
man of him : — he won't like to go back to his coster- 
mongering." 

And so completely and unexceptionally is this so, 
that, if I had time to-night, I could show you that a 
nation cannot be affected by any vice, or weakness, 
without expressing it, legibly, and for ever, either in 
bad art, or by want of art ; and that there is no national 
virtue, small or great, which is not manifestly expressed 



282 TRAFFIC 

in all the art which circumstances enable the people 
possessing that virtue to produce. Take, for instance, 
your great English virtue of enduring and patient 
courage. You have at present in England only one art 
of any consequence — that is, iron-working. You 
know thoroughly well how to cast and hammer iron. 
Now, do you think, in those masses of lava which you 
build volcanic cones to melt, and which you forge at 
the mouths of the Infernos you have created ; do you 
think, on those iron plates, your courage and endurance 
are not written for ever, — not merely with an iron pen, 
but on iron parchment.^ And take also your great 
English vice — European vice — vice of all the world 
— vice of all other worlds that roll or shine in heaven, 
bearing with them yet the atmosphere of hell — the 
vice of jealousy, which brings competition into your 
commerce, treachery into your councils, and dishonour 
into your wars — that vice which has rendered for you, 
and for your next neighbouring nation, the daily occu- 
pations of existence no longer possible, but with the 
mail upon your breasts and the sword loose in its sheath ; 
so that at last, you have realized for all the multitudes 
of the two great peoples who lead the so-called civiliza- 
tion of the earth, — you have realized for them all, I 
say, in person and in policy, what was once true only 
of the rough Border riders of your Cheviot hills — 

They carved at the meal 
With gloves of steel, 
And they drank the red wine through the helmet barr'd; ^ — 

do you think that this national shame and dastardli- 
ness of heart are not written as legibly on every rivet 
of your iron armour as the strength of the right hands 
that forged it ? 

^ Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto 1, stanza 4. 



TRAFFIC 283 

Friends, I know not whether this thing be the more 
ludicrous or the more melancholy. It is quite un- 
speakably both. Suppose, instead of being now sent 
for by you, I had been sent for by some private 
gentleman, living in a suburban house, with his garden 
separated only by a fruit wall from his next door 
neighbour's ; and he had called me to consult with him 
on the furnishing of his drawing-room. I begin looking 
about me, and find the walls rather bare ; I think such 
and such a paper might be desirable — perhaps a little 
fresco here and there on the ceiling — a damask curtain 
or so at the windows. "Ah," says my employer, 
" damask curtains, indeed ! That 's all very fine, but 
you know I can't afford that kind of thing just now!'* 
*' Yet the world credits you with a splendid income!" 
"Ah, yes," says my friend, "but do you know, at 
present I am obliged to spend it nearly all in steel- 
traps.^" "Steel-traps! for whom.^" "Why, for that 
fellow on the other side the wall, you know: we're 
very good friends, capital friends ; but we are obliged 
to keep our traps set on both sides of the wall; we 
could not possibly keep on friendly terms without 
them, and our spring guns. The worst of it is, we are 
both clever fellows enough; and there's never a day 
passes that we don't find out a new trap, or a new gun- 
barrel, or something; we spend about fifteen millions 
a year each in our traps, take it altogether ; and I don't 
see how we're to do with less." A highly comic state 
of life for two private gentlemen ! but for two nations, 
it seems to me, not wholly comic. Bedlam would be 
comic, perhaps, if there were only one madman in it; 
and your Christmas pantomime is comic, when there 
is only one clown in it ; but when the whole world turns 
clown, and paints itself red with its own heart's blood 



284 TRAFFIC 

instead of vermilion, it is something else than comic, I 
think. 

Mind, I know a great deal of this is play, and will- 
ingly allow for that. You don't know what to do with 
yourselves for a sensation : fox-hunting and cricketing 
will not carry you through the whole of this unendur- 
ably long mortal life : you liked pop-guns when you 
were schoolboys, and rifles and Armstrongs are only 
the same things better made : but then the worst of it 
is, that what was play to you when boys, was not play 
to the sparrows; and what is play to you now, is not 
play to the small birds of State neither; and for the 
black eagles, you are somewhat shy of taking shots at 
them, if I mistake not.^ 

I must get back to the matter in hand, however. 
Believe me, without further instance, I could show you, 
in all time, that every nation's vice, or virtue, was 
WTitten in its art : the soldiership of early Greece ; the 
sensuality of late Italy; the visionary religion of Tus- 
cany ; the splendid human energy and beauty of Venice. 
I have no time to do this to-night (I have done it else- 
where before now) ; ^ but I proceed to apply the prin- 
ciple to ourselves in a more searching manner. 

1 notice that among all the new buildings that cover 

your once wild hills, churches and schools are mixed in 

due, that is to say, in large proportion, with your mills 

and mansions ; and I notice also that the churches and 

schools are almost always Gothic, and the mansions 

and mills are never Gothic. Will you allow me to ask 

precisely the meaning of this? For, remember, it is 

peculiarly a modern phenomenon. When Gothic was 

* The reference was to the reluctance of this country to take 
arms in defence of Denmark against Prussia and Austria. [Cook 
and Wedderburn.] 

2 See, e. g., pp. 167 ff. and 270 ff. 



TRAFFIC 285 

invented, houses were Gothic as well as churches; and 
when the Italian style superseded the Gothic, churches 
were Italian as well as houses. If there is a Gothic spire 
to the cathedral of Antwerp, there is a Gothic belfry to 
the Hotel de Ville at Brussels; if Inigo Jones builds 
an Italian Whitehall, Sir Christopher Wren builds an 
Italian St. Paul's.^ But now you live under one school 
of architecture, and worship under another. What do 
you mean by doing this ? Am I to understand that you 
are thinking of changing your architecture back to 
Gothic ; and that you treat your churches experimen- 
tally, because it does not matter what mistakes you 
make in a church? Or am I to understand that you 
consider Gothic a pre-eminently sacred and beautiful 
mode of building, which you think, like the fine frank- 
incense, should be mixed for the tabernacle only, and 
reserved for your religious services ? For if this be the 
feeling, though it may seem at first as if it were grace- 
ful and reverent, you will find that, at the root of the 
matter, it signifies neither more nor less than that you 
have separated your religion from your life. 

For consider what a wide significance this fact has ; 
and remember that it is not you only, but all the people 
of England, who are behaving thus, just now. 

You have all got into the habit of calling the church 
"the house of God." I have seen, over the doors of 
many churches, the legend actually carved, " This is 
the house of God and this is the gate of heaven." ^ 
Now, note where that legend comes from, and of what 
place it was first spoken. A boy leaves his father's 
house to go on a long journey on foot, to visit his uncle : 

1 Inigo Jones [1573-1652] and Sir Christopher Wren [1632-1723] 
were the best known architects of their respective generations. 

2 Genesis xxviii, 17. 



286 TRAFFIC 

he has to cross a wild hill-desert; just as if one of your 
own boys had to cross the wolds to visit an uncle at 
Carlisle. The second or third day your boy finds him- 
self somewhere between Hawes and Brough, in the 
midst of the moors, at sunset. It is stony ground, and 
boggy ; he cannot go one foot further that night. Down 
he lies, to sleep, on Wharnside, where best he may, 
gathering a few of the stones together to put under his 
head ; — so wild the place is, he cannot get anything 
but stones. And there, lying under the broad night, he 
has a dream ; and he sees a ladder set up on the earth, 
and the top of it reaches to heaven, and the angels of 
God are ascending and descending upon it. And when 
he wakes out of his sleep, he says, " How dreadful is 
this place; surely this is none other than the house of 
God, and this is the gate of heaven." This place, ob- 
serve ; not this church ; not this city ; not this stone, even, 
which he puts up for a memorial — the piece of flint 
on which his head has lain. But this place ; this windy 
slope of Wharnside; this moorland hollow, torrent- 
bitten, snow-blighted! this any place where God lets 
down the ladder. And how are you to know where that 
will be ? or how are you to determine where it may be, 
but by being ready for it always ? Do you know where 
the lightning is to fall next ? You do know that, partly; 
you can guide the lightning; but you cannot guide the 
going forth of the Spirit, which is that lightning when 
it shines from the east to the west.^ 

But the perpetual and insolent warping of that strong 
verse to serve a merely ecclesiastical purpose is only 
one of the thousand instances in which we sink back 
into gross Judaism. We call our churches "temples." 
Now, you know perfectly well they are not temples. 
* Matthew xxiv, 27. 



TRAFFIC 287 

They have never had, never can have, anything what- 
ever to do with temples. They are " synagogues " — 
"gathering places" — where you gather yourselves to- 
gether as an assembly; and by not calling them so, 
you again miss the force of another mighty text — 
" Thou, when thou prayest, shalt not be as the hypo- 
crites are; for they love to pray standing in the 
churches" [we should translate it], "that they may be 
seen of men. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into 
thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to 
thy Father" — which is, not in chancel nor in aisle, 
but "in secret." ^ 

Now, you feel, as I say this to you — I know you 
feel — as if I were trying to take away the honour of 
your churches. Not so ; I am trying to prove to you the 
honour of your houses and your hills; not that the 
Church is not sacred — but that the whole Earth is. 
I would have you feel, what careless, what constant, 
what infectious sin there is in all modes of thought, 
whereby, in calling your churches only " holy," you call 
your hearths and homes "profane"; and have sepa- 
rated yourselves from the heathen by casting all your 
household gods to the ground, instead of recognizing, 
in the place of their many and feeble Lares, the pre- 
sence of your One and Mighty Lord and Lar. 

" But what has all this to do with our Exchange ? " 
you ask me, impatiently. My dear friends, it has just 
everything to do with it ; on these inner and great ques- 
tions depend all the outer and little ones ; and if you 
have asked me down here to speak to you, because 
you had before been interested in anything I have 
written, you must know that all I have yet said about 
architecture was to show this. The book I called The 
^ Matthew vi, 6. 



288 TRAFFIC 

Seven Lamps was to show that certain right states of 
temper and moral feehng were the magic powers by 
which all good architecture, without exception, had 
been produced. The Stones of Venice had, from be- 
ginning to end, no other aim than to show that the 
Gothic architecture of Venice had arisen out of, and 
indicated in all its features, a state of pure national 
faith, and of domestic virtue; and that its Renaissance 
architecture had arisen out of, and in all its features 
indicated, a state of concealed national infidelity, and 
of domestic corruption. And now, you ask me what 
style is best to build in, and how can I answer, know- 
ing the meaning of the two styles, but by another 
question — do you mean to build as Christians or as 
Infidels ? And still more — do you mean to build as 
honest Christians or as honest Infidels ? as thoroughly 
and confessedly either one or the other ? You don't like 
to be asked such rude questions. I cannot help it ; they 
are of much more importance than this Exchange busi- 
ness ; and if they can be at once answered, the Exchange 
business settles itself in a moment. But before I press 
them farther, I must ask leave to explain one point 
clearly. 

In all my past work, my endeavour has been to show 
that good architecture is essentially religious — the 
production of a faithful and virtuous, not of an infidel 
and corrupted people. But in the course of doing this, 
I have had also to show that good architecture is not 
ecclesiastical. People are so apt to look upon religion 
as the business of the clergy, not their own, that the 
moment they hear of anything depending on" religion," 
they think it must also have depended on the priest- 
hood ; and I have had to take what place was to be oc- 
cupied between these two errors, and fight both, often 



TRAFFIC 289 

with seeming contradiction. Good architecture is the 
work of good and believing men ; therefore, you say, at 
least some people say, " Good architecture must essen- 
tially have been the work of the clergy, not of the laity." 
No — a thousand times no ; good architecture ^ has 
always been the work of the commonalty, not of the 
clergy. "What," you say, "those glorious cathedrals 
— the pride of Europe — did their builders not form 
Gothic architecture ? " No ; they corrupted Gothic 
architecture. Gothic was formed in the baron's castle, 
and the burgher's street. It was formed by the thoughts, 
and hands, and powers of labouring citii^ens and war- 
rior kings. By the monk it was used as an instrument 
for the aid of his superstition ; when that superstition 
became a beautiful madness, and the best hearts of 
Europe vainly dreamed and pined in the cloister, and 
vainly raged and perished in the crusade, — through 
that fury of perverted faith and wasted war, the Gothic 
rose also to its loveliest, most fantastic, and, finally, 
most foolish dreams; and in those dreams, was lost. 

I hope, now, that there is no risk of your misunder- 
standing me when I come to the gist of what I want to 
say to-night; — when I repeat, that every great na- 
tional architecture has been the result and exponent of 
a great national religion. You can't have bits of it here, 
bits there — you must have it everywhere or nowhere. 
It is not the monopoly of a clerical company — it is 
not the exponent of a theological dogma — it is not the 
hieroglyphic writing of an initiated priesthood; it is 
the manly language of a people inspired by resolute 
and common purpose, and rendering resolute and com- 
mon fidelity to the legible laws of an undoubted God. 

^ And all other arts, for the most part; even of incredulous and 
secularly-minded commonalties. [Ruskin.] 



290 TRAFFIC 

Now, there have as yet been three distinct schools 
of European architecture. I say, European, because 
Asiatic and African architectures belong so entirely to 
other races and climates, that there is no question of 
them here; only, in passing, I will simply assure you 
that whatever is good or great in Egypt, and Syria, 
and India, is just good or great for the same reasons 
as the buildings on our side of the Bosphorus. We 
Europeans, then, have had three great religions: the 
Greek, which was the worship of the God of Wisdom 
and Power; the Mediaeval, which was the worship of 
the God of Judgment and Consolation; the Renais- 
sance, which was the worship of the God of Pride and 
Beauty: these three we have had — they are past, — 
and now, at last, we English have got a fourth religion, 
and a God of our own, about which I want to ask you. 
But I must explain these three old ones first. 

I repeat, first, the Greeks essentially worshipped the 
God of Wisdom; so that whatever contended against 
their religion, — to the Jews a stumbling-block, — was, 
to the Greeks — Foolishness. ^ 

The first Greek idea of deity was that expressed in 
the word, of which we keep the remnant in our words 
" Dz-urnal " and " Di-vine " — the god of Day, Jupiter 
the revealer. Athena is his daughter, but especially 
daughter of the Intellect, springing armed from the 
head. We are only with the help of recent investigation 
beginning to penetrate the depth of meaning couched 
under the Athenaic symbols : but I may note rapidly, 
that her aegis, the mantle with the serpent fringes, in 
which she often, in the best statues, is represented as 
folding up her left hand, for better guard ; and the Gor- 
gon, on her shield, are both representative mainly of 
^ 1 Corinthians i, 23. 



TRAFFIC 291 

the chilling horror and sadness (turning men to stone, 
as it were), of the outmost and superficial spheres of 
knowledge — that knowledge which separates, in bit- 
terness, hardness, and sorrow, the heart of the full- 
grown man from the heart of the child. For out of 
imperfect knowledge spring terror, dissension, danger, 
and disdain; but from perfect knowledge, given by the 
full-revealed Athena, strength and peace, in sign of 
which she is crowned with the olive spray, and bears 
the resistless spear. ^ 

This, then, was the Greek conception of purest 
Deity; and every habit of life, and every form of his 
art developed themselves from the seeking this bright^ 
serene, resistless wisdom; and setting himself, as a 
man, to do things evermore rightly and strongly; ^ not 
with any ardent affection or ultimate hope; but with a 
resolute and continent energy of will, as knowing that 
for failure there was no consolation, and for sin there 
was no remission. And the Greek architecture rose 
unerring, bright, clearly defined, and self-contained. 

Next followed in Europe the great Christian faith, 
which was essentially the religion of Comfort. Its great 
doctrine is the remission of sins; for which cause, it 
happens, too often, in certain phases of Christianity, 
that sin and sickness themselves are partly glorified, 

^ For further interpretation of Greek mythology see Ruskin's 
Queen of the Air. 

^ It is an error to suppose that the Greek worship, or seeking, 
was chiefly of Beauty. It was essentially of Rightness and Strength, 
founded on Forethought : the principal character of Greek art is not 
beauty, but design: and the Dorian Apollo-worship and Athenian 
Virgin-worship are both expressions of adoration of divine wisdom 
and purity. Next to these great deities, rank, in power over the 
national mind, Dionysus and Ceres, the givers of human strength 
and life; then, for heroic example, Hercules. There is no Venus- 
worship among the Greeks in the great times : and the Muses are 
essentially teachers of Truth, and of its harmonies. [Ruskin.] 



292 TRAFFIC 

as if, the more you had to be healed of, the more divine 
was the healing. The practical result of this doctrine, 
in art, is a continual contemplation of sin and disease, 
and of imaginary states of purification from them ; thus 
we have an architecture conceived in a mingled sen- 
timent of melancholy and aspiration, partly severe, 
partly luxuriant, which will bend itself to every one of 
our needs, and every one of our fancies, and be strong 
or weak with us, as we are strong or weak ourselves. 
It is, of all architecture, the basest, when base people 
build it — of all, the noblest, when built by the noble. 

And now note that both these religions — Greek and 
Mediaeval — perished by falsehood in their own main 
purpose. The Greek religion of Wisdom perished in a 
false philosophy — " Oppositions of science, falsely so 
called." The Medieeval religion of Consolation per- 
ished in false comfort ; in remission of sins given lyingly. 
It was the selling of absolution that ended the Mediaeval 
faith ; and I can tell you more, it is the selling of abso- 
lution which, to the end of time, will mark false Chris- 
tianity. Pure Christianity gives her remission of sins 
only by ending them; but false Christianity gets her 
remission of sins by compounding for them. And there 
are many ways of compounding for them. We English 
have beautiful little quiet ways of buying absolution, 
whether in low Church or high, far more cunning than 
any of Tetzel's trading.^ 

Then, thirdly, there followed the religion of Pleasure, 
in which all Europe gave itself to luxury, ending in 
death. First, bals masques in every saloon, and then 
guillotines in every square. And all these three wor- 
ships issue in vast temple building. Your Greek 

* Tetzel's tradinj^ in Papal indulj^ences aroused Luther to the 
protest which ended in the Reformation. 



TRAFFIC 293 

worshipped Wisdom, and built you the Parthenon — 
the Virgin's temple. The Mediaeval worshipped Con- 
solation, and built you Virgin temples also — but to 
our Lady of Salvation. Then the Revivalist worshipped 
beauty, of a sort, and built you Versailles and the Vati- 
can. Now, lastly, will you tell me what we worship, 
and what we build ? 

You know we are speaking always of the real, active, 
continual, national worship; that by which men act, 
while they live ; not that which they talk of, when they 
die. Now, we have, indeed, a nominal religion, to 
which we pay tithes of property and sevenths of time ; 
but we have also a practical and earnest religion, to 
which we devote nine-tenths of our property and sixth- 
sevenths of our time. And we dispute a great deal 
about the nominal religion : but we are all unanimous 
about this practical one; of which I think you will 
admit that the ruling goddess may be best generally 
described as the " Goddess of Getting-on," or " Britan- 
nia of the Market." The Athenians had an "Athena 
Agoraia," or Athena of the Market ; but she was a sub- 
ordinate type of their goddess, while our Britannia 
Agoraia is the principal type of ours. And all your great 
architectural works are, of course, built to her. It is 
long since you built a great cathedral; and how you 
would laugh at me if I proposed building a cathedral 
on the top of one of these hills of yours, taking it for an 
Acropolis ! But your railroad mounds, vaster than the 
walls of Babylon; your railroad stations, vaster than 
the temple of Ephesus, and innumerable; your chim- 
neys, how much more mighty and costly than cathe- 
dral spires ! your harbour-piers ; your warehouses ; your 
exchanges ! — all these are built to your great Goddess 
of "Getting-on"; and she has formed, and will con- 



294 TRAFFIC 

tinue to form, your architecture, as long as you worship 
her; and it is quite vain to ask me to tell you how to 
build to her ; you know far better than I. 

There might, indeed, on some theories, be a con- 
ceivably good architecture for Exchanges — that is to 
say, if there were any heroism in the fact or deed of ex- 
change which might be typically carved on the outside 
of your building. For, you know, all beautiful architec- 
ture must be adorned with sculpture or painting ; and 
for sculpture or painting, you must have a subject. And 
hitherto it has been a received opinion among the 
nations of the world that the only right subjects for 
either, were heroisms of some sort. Even on his pots 
and his flagons, the Greek put a Hercules slaying lions, 
or an Apollo slaying serpents, or Bacchus slaying mel- 
ancholy giants, and earthborn despondencies. On his 
temples, the Greek put contests of great warriors in 
founding states, or of gods with evil spirits. On his 
houses and temples alike, the Christian put carvings 
of angels conquering devils; or of hero-martyrs ex- 
changing this world for another : subject inappropriate, 
I think, to our manner of exchange here. And the Mas- 
ter of Christians not only left His followers without any 
orders as to the sculpture of affairs of exchange on the 
outside of buildings, but gave some strong evidence of 
His dislike of affairs of exchange within them.^ And 
yet there might surely be a heroism in such affairs; 
and all commerce become a kind of selling of doves, 
not impious. The wonder has always been great to me, 
that heroism has never been supposed to be in any wise 
consistent with the practice of supplying people with 
food, or clothes ; but rather with that of quartering one's 
self upon them for food, and stripping them of their 
^ Matthew xxi, 12. 



TRAFFIC 295 

clothes. Spoiling of armour is an heroic deed in all ages ; 
but the selling of clothes, old, or new, has never taken 
any colour of magnanimity.. Yet one does not see why 
feeding the hungry and clothing the naked should ever 
become base businesses, even when engaged in on a 
large scale. If one could contrive to attach the notion 
of conquest to them anyhow ! so that, supposing there 
were anywhere an obstinate race, who refused to be 
comforted, one might take some pride in giving them 
compulsory comfort! and, as it were, "occupying a 
country" with one's gifts, instead of one's armies? If 
one could only consider it as much a victory to get a 
barren field sown, as to get an eared field stripped; 
and contend who should build villages, instead of who 
should "carry" them! Are not all forms of heroism 
conceivable in doing these serviceable deeds ? You 
doubt who is strongest ? It might be ascertained by 
push of spade, as well as push of sword . Who is wisest ? 
There are witty things to be thought of in planning 
other business than campaigns. Who is bravest .^ There 
are always the elements to fight with, stronger than 
men ; and nearly as merciless. 

The only absolutely and unapproachably heroic 
element in the soldier's work seems to be — that he is 
paid little for it — and regularly : while you traffickers, 
and exchangers, and others occupied in presumably 
benevolent business, like to be paid much for it — and 
by chance. I never can make out how it is that a 
knight-errsini does not expect to be paid for his trouble, 
but a pedlar-err Sini always does ; — that people are 
willing to take hard knocks for nothing, but never to 
sell ribands cheap ; that they are ready to go on fervent 
crusades, to recover the tomb of a buried God, but 
never on any travels to fulfil the orders of a living one; 



2^6 TRAFFIC 

— that they will go anywhere barefoot to preach their 
faith, but must be well bribed to practise it, and are 
perfectly ready to give the Gospel gratis, but never the 
loaves and fishes. 

If you chose to take the matter up on any such sol- 
dierly principle ; to do your commerce, and your feeding 
of nations, for fixed salaries; and to be as particular 
about giving people the best food, and the best cloth, 
as soldiers are about giving them the best gunpowder, 
I could carve something for you on your exchange 
worth looking at. But I can only at present suggest 
decorating its frieze with pendant purses ; and making 
its pillars broad at the base, for the sticking of bills. 
And in the innermost chambers of it there might be a 
statue of Britannia of the Market, who may have, per- 
haps advisably, a partridge for her crest, typical at 
once of her courage in fighting for noble ideas, and of 
her interest in game ; and round its neck, the inscription 
in golden letters, " Perdix fovit quae non peperit." ^ 
Then, for her spear, she might have a weaver's beam; 
and on her shield, instead of St. George's Cross, the 
Milanese boar, semi-fleeced, with the town of Gennes- 
aret proper, in the field ; and the legend, " In the best 
market," ^ and her corslet, of leather, folded over her 
heart in the shape of a purse, with thirty slits in it, for 
a piece of money to go in at, on each day of the month. 
And I doubt not but that people would come to see 
your exchange, and its goddess, with applause. 

Nevertheless, I want to point out to you certain 
strange characters in this goddess of yours. She differs 

^ Jeremiah xvii, 11 (best in Septuagint and Vulgate). "As the 
partridge, fostering what she brought not forth, so he that getteth 
riches not by right shall leave them in the midst of his days, and 
at his end shall be a fool." [Ruskin.] 

2 Meaning, fully, "We have brought our pigs to it." [Ruskin.] 



TRAFFIC 297 

from the great Greek and Mediaeval deities essentially 
in two things — first, as to the continuance of her 
presumed power; secondly, as to the extent of it. 

1st, as to the Continuance. 

The Greek Goddess of Wisdom gave continual 
increase of wisdom, as the Christian Spirit of Comfort 
(or Comforter) continual increase of comfort. There 
was no question, with these, of any limit or cessation 
of function. But with your Agora Goddess, that is just 
the most important question. Getting on — but where 
to ? Gathering together — but how much ? Do you 
mean to gather always — never to spend ? If so, I wish 
you joy of your goddess, for I am just as well off as 
you, without the trouble of worshipping her at all. 
But if you do not spend, somebody else will — some- 
body else must. And it is because of this (among many 
other such errors) that I have fearlessly declared your 
so-called science of Political Economy to be no science; 
because, namely, it has omitted the study of exactly 
the most important branch of the business — the study 
of spending. For spend you must, and as much as you 
make, ultimately. You gather corn : — will you bury 
England under a heap of grain ; or will you, when you 
have gathered, finally eat ? You gather gold : — will 
you make your house-roofs of it, or pave your streets 
with it.^ That is still one way of spending it. But if 
you keep it, that you may get more, I '11 give you more ; 
I '11 give you all the gold you want — all you can 
imagine — if you can tell me what you'll do with it. 
You shall have thousands of gold-pieces ; — thousands 
of thousands — millions — mountains, of gold : where 
will you keep them ? Will you put an Olympus of 
silver upon a golden Pelion — make Ossa like a wart ? ^ 
1 Cf. HamleU 5. 1. 306. 



298 TRAFFIC 

Do you think the rain and dew would then come down 
to you, in the streams from such mountains, more 
blessedly than they will down the mountains which 
God has made for you, of moss and whinstone ? But 
it is not gold that you want to gather ! What is it ? 
greenbacks? No; not those neither. What is it then 
— is it ciphers after a capital I ? Cannot you practise 
writing ciphers, and write as many as you want ? Write 
ciphers for an hour every morning, in a big book, and 
say every evening, I am worth all those noughts more 
than I was yesterday. Won't that do ? Well, what in 
the name of Plutus is it you want ? Not gold, not green- 
backs, not ciphers after a capital I ? You will have to 
answer, after all, "No; we want, somehow or other, 
money's worths Well, what is that ? Let your God- 
dess of Getting-on discover it, and let her learn to stay 
therein. 

2d. But there is yet another question to be asked 
respecting this Goddess of Getting-on. The first was of 
the continuance of her power ; the second is of its extent. 

Pallas and the Madonna were supposed to be all the 
world's Pallas, and all the world's Madonna. They 
could teach all men, and they could comfort all men. 
But, look strictly into the nature of the power of your 
Goddess of Getting-on; and you will find she is the 
Goddess — not of everybody's getting on — but only 
of somebody's getting on. This is a vital, or rather 
deathful, distinction. Examine it in your own ideal of 
the state of national life which this Goddess is to evoke 
and maintain. I asked you what it was, when I was 
last here ; — you have never told me.^ Now, shall I try 
to tell you ? 

* Referring to a lecture on Modern Manufacture and Design, de- 
livered at Bradford, March 1, 1859, published later as Lecture III 
in The Two Paths. 



TRAFFIC 299 

Your ideal of human life then is, I think, that it 
should be passed in a pleasant undulating world, 
with iron and coal everywhere underneath it. On each 
pleasant bank of this world is to be a beautiful man- 
sion, with two wings; and stables, and coach-houses; 
a moderately-sized park; a large garden and hot-houses ; 
and pleasant carriage drives through the shrubberies. 
In this mansion are to live the favoured votaries of the 
Goddess; the English gentleman, with his gracious 
wife, and his beautiful family; always able to have the 
boudoir and the jewels for the wife, and the beautiful 
ball dresses for the daughters, and hunters for the sons, 
and a shooting in the Highlands for himself. At the 
bottom of the bank, is to be the mill; not less than a 
quarter of a mile long, with a steam engine at each end, 
and two in the middle, and a chimney three hundred 
feet high. In this mill are to be in constant employment 
from eight hundred to a thousand workers, who never 
drink, never strike, always go to church on Sunday, 
and always express themselves in respectful language. 

Is not that, broadly, and in the main features, the 
kind of thing you propose to yourselves? It is very 
pretty indeed seen from above; not at all so pretty, 
seen from below. For, observe, while to one family 
this deity is indeed the Goddess of Getting-on, to a 
thousand families she is the Goddess of not Getting- 
on. "Nay," you say, "they have all their chance." 
Yes, so has every one in a lottery, but there must 
always be the same number of blanks. "Ah! but in 
a lottery it is not skill and intelligence which take the 
lead, but blind chance." What then ! do you think the 
old practice, that "they should take who have the 
power, and they should keep who can," * is less iniqui- 

* See Wordsworth's Rob Roy's Grave, 39-40. 



300 TRAFFIC 

tous, when the power has become power of brains in- 
stead of fist? and that, though we may not take ad- 
vantage of a child's or a woman's weakness, we may 
of a man's foolishness ? " Nay, but finally, work must 
be done, and some one must be at the top, some one at 
the bottom." Granted, my friends. Work must always 
be, and captains of work must always be; and if you 
in the least remember the tone of any of my writings, 
you must know that they are thought unfit for this age, 
because they are always insisting on need of government, 
and speaking with scorn of liberty. But I beg you to 
observe that there is a wide difference between being 
captains or governors of work, and taking the profits 
of it. It does not follow, because you are general of an 
army, that you are to take all the treasure, or land, it 
wins ; (if it fight for treasure or land ;) neither, because 
you are king of a nation, that you are to consume all 
the profits of the nation's work. Real kings, on the 
contrary, are known invariably by their doing quite the 
reverse of this, — by their taking the least possible 
quantity of the nation's work for themselves. There 
is no test of real kinghood so infallible as that. Does 
the crowned creature live simply, bravely, unostenta- 
tiously ? probably he is a King. Does he cover his body 
with jewels, and his table with delicates? in all prob- 
ability he is not sl King. It is possible he may be, as 
Solomon was; but that is when the nation shares his 
splendour with him. Solomon made gold, not only to 
be in his own palace as stones, but to be in Jerusalem 
as stones.^ But, even so, for the most part, these splen- 
did kinghoods expire in ruin, and only the true king- 
hoods live, which are of royal labourers governing 
loyal labourers; who, both leading rough lives, estab- 

^ 1 Kings x, 27. 



TRAFFIC 301 

Hsh the true dynasties. Conclusively you will find 
that because you are king of a nation, it does not fol- 
low that you are to gather for yourself all the wealth 
of that nation ; neither, because you are king of a small 
part of the nation, and lord over the means of its main- 
tenance — over field, or mill, or mine, — are you to 
take all the produce of that piece of the foundation of 
national existence for yourself. 

You will tell me I need not preach against these 
things, for I cannot mend them. No, good friends, I 
cannot; but you can, and you will ; or something else 
can and will. Even good things have no abiding power 
— and shall these evil things persist in victorious evil ? 
All history shows, on the contrary, that to be the exact 
thing they never can do. Change must come; but it 
is ours to determine whether change of growth, or 
change of death. Shall the Parthenon be in ruins on 
its rock, and Bolton priory ^ in its meadow, but these 
mills of yours be the consummation of the buildings of 
the earth, and their wheels be as the wheels of eter- 
nity ? Think you that " men may come, and men may 
go," but — mills — go on for ever ? ^ Not so ; out of 
these, better or worse shall come; and it is for you to 
choose which. 

I know that none of this wrong is done with dehb- 
erate purpose. I know, on the contrary, that you wish 
your workmen well; that you do much for them, and 
that you desire to do more for them, if you saw your 
way to such benevolence safely. I know that even all 
this wrong and misery are brought about by a warped 
sense of duty, each of you striving to do his best ; but, 
unhappily, not knowing for whom this best should be 

^ A beautiful ruin in Yorkshire. 
2 Cf. Tennyson's The Brook. 



302 TRAFFIC 

done. And all our hearts have been betrayed by the 
plausible impiety of the modern economist, telling us 
that, "To do the best for ourselves, is finally to do the 
best for others." Friends, our great Master said not 
so; and most absolutely we shall find this world is not 
made so. Indeed, to do the best for others, is finally 
to do the best for ourselves; but it will not do to have 
our eyes fixed on that issue. The Pagans had got be- 
yond that. Hear what a Pagan says of this matter; 
hear what were, perhaps, the last written words of 
Plato, — if not the last actually written (for this we 
cannot know), yet assuredly in fact and power his 
parting words — in which, endeavouring to give full 
crowning and harmonious close to all his thoughts, and 
to speak the sum of them by the imagined sentence of 
the Great Spirit, his strength and his heart fail him, 
and the words cease, broken off for ever. They are at 
the close of the dialogue called Critias, in which he 
describes, partly from real tradition, partly in ideal 
dream, the early state of Athens ; and the genesis, and 
order, and religion, of the fabled isle of Atlantis; in 
which genesis he conceives the same first perfection 
and final degeneracy of man, which in our own Scrip- 
tural tradition is expressed by saying that the Sons of 
God inter-married with the daughters of men,^ for he 
supposes the earliest race to have been indeed the chil- 
dren of God ; and to have corrupted themselves, until 
" their spot was not the spot of his children." ^ And this, 
he says, was the end ; that indeed " through many gen- 
erations, so long as the God's nature in them yet was 
full, they were submissive to the sacred laws, and car- 
ried themselves lovingly to all that had kindred with 
them in divineness ; for their uttermost spirit was faith- 
* Genesis vi, 2. ^ Deuteronomy xxxii, 5. 



TRAFFIC 303 

ful and true, and in every wise great; so that, in all 
meekness of wisdom, they dealt with each other, and 
took all the chances of life; and despising all things 
except virtue, they cared little what happened day by 
day, and hore lightly the burden of gold and of posses- 
sions; for they saw that, if only their common love and 
virtue increased, all these things would he increased 
together with them; but to set their esteem and ardent 
pursuit upon material possession would be to lose that 
first, and their virtue and affection together with it. 
And by such reasoning, and what of the divine nature 
remained in them, they gained all this greatness of 
which we have already told ; but when the God's part 
of them faded and became extinct, being mixed again 
and again, and effaced by the prevalent mortality; 
and the human nature at last exceeded, they then be- 
came unable to endure the courses of fortune ; and fell 
into shapelessness of life, and baseness in the sight of 
him who could see, having lost everything that was 
fairest of their honour; while to the blind hearts which 
could not discern the true life, tending to happiness, it 
seemed that they were then chiefly noble and happy, 
being filled with an iniquity of inordinate possession 
and power. Whereupon, the God of Gods, whose King- 
hood is in laws, beholding a once just nation thus cast 
into misery, and desiring to lay such punishment upon 
them as might make them repent into restraining, 
gathered together all the gods into his dwelling-place, 
which from heaven's centre overlooks whatever has part 
in creation; and having assembled them, he said" — 
The rest is silence. Last words of the chief wisdom 
of the heathen, spoken of this idol of riches; this idol 
of yours; this golden image, high by measureless 
cubits, set up where your green fields of England are 



304 TRAFFIC 

furnace-burnt into the likeness of the plain of Dura : * 
this idol, forbidden to us, first of all idols, by our own 
Master and faith ; forbidden to us also by every human 
lip that has ever, in any age or people, been accounted 
of as able to speak according to the purposes of God. 
Continue to make that forbidden deity your principal 
one, and soon no more art, no more science, no more 
pleasure will be possible. Catastrophe will come; or, 
worse than catastrophe, slow mouldering and wither- 
ing into Hades. But if you can fix some conception of 
a true human state of life to be striven for — life, good 
for all men, as for yourselves ; if you can determine 
some honest and simple order of existence ; following 
those trodden ways of wisdom, which are pleasantness,^ 
and seeking her quiet and withdrawn paths, which are 
peace; — then, and so sanctifying wealth into "com- 
monwealth," all your art, your literature, your daily 
labours, your domestic affection, and citizen's duty, will 
join and increase into one magnificent harmony. You 
will know then how to build, well enough; you will 
build with stone well, but with flesh better; temples not 
made with hands,^ but riveted of hearts; and that kind 
of marble, crimson-veined, is indeed eternal. 

^ Daniel iii, 1. 
2 Proverbs iii, 17. 
' Acts vii, 48. 



LIFE AND ITS ARTS 

This lecture, the full title of which is <^ The Mystery of 
Life and its Arts," was delivered in Dublin on May 13, 
1868. It composed one of a series of afternoon lectures on 
various subjects, religion excepted, arranged by some of the 
foremost residents in Dublin. The latter half of the lecture 
is included in the present volume of selections. The first 
publication of the lecture was as an, additional part to a re- 
vised edition of Sesame and Lilies in 1871. Euskin took 
exceptional care in writing " The Mystery of Life " : he 
once said in conversation, ''I put into it all that I know," 
and in the preface to it when published he tells us that 
certain passages of it " contain the best expression I have 
yet been able to put in words of what, so far as is within 
my power, I mean henceforward both to do myself, and to 
plead with all over whom I have any influence to do ac- 
cording to their means." Sir Leslie Stephen says this "is, 
to my mind, the most perfect of his essays." In later edi- 
tions of Sesame and Lilies this lecture was withdrawn. 
At the time the lecture was delivered its tone was charac- 
teristic of Ruskin's own thought and of the attitude he then 
took toward the public. 

We have sat at the feet of the poets who sang of 
heaven, and they have told us their dreams. We have 
listened to the poets who sang of earth, and they have 
chanted to us dirges and words of despair. But there 
is one class of men more : — men, not capable of vision, 
nor sensitive to sorrow, but firm of purpose — practised 
in business; learned in all that can be, (by handling,) 
known. Men, whose hearts and hopes are wholly in 
this present world, from whom, therefore, we may 
surely learn, at least, how, at present, conveniently to 
live in it. What will they say to us, or show us by 



306 LIFE AND ITS ARTS 

example ? These kings — these councillors — these 
statesmen and builders of kingdoms -^ these capital- 
ists and men of business, who weigh the earth, and the 
dust of it, in a balance.^ They know the world, surely; 
and what is the mystery of life to us, is none to them. 
They can surely show us how to live, while we live, and 
to gather out of the present world what is best. 

I think I can best tell you their answer, by telling 
you a dream I had once. For though I am no poet, I 
have dreams sometimes : — I dreamed I was at a child's 
May-day party, in which every means of entertainment 
had been provided for them, by a wise and kind host. 
It was in a stately house, with beautiful gardens at- 
tached to it; and the children had been set free in the 
rooms and gardens, with no care whatever but how to 
pass their afternoon rejoicingly. They did not, indeed, 
know much about what was to happen next day; and 
some of them, I thought, were a little frightened, be- 
cause there was a chance of their being sent to a new 
school where there were examinations; but they kept 
the thoughts of that out of their heads as well as they 
could, and resolved to enjoy themselves. The house, 
I said, was in a beautiful garden, and in the garden 
were all kinds of flowers ; sweet, grassy banks for rest ; 
and smooth lawns for play; and pleasant streams and 
woods; and rocky places for climbing. And the chil- 
dren were happy for a little while, but presently they 
separated themselves into parties ; and then each party 
declared it would have a piece of the garden for its 
own, and that none of the others should have anything 
to do with that piece. Next, they quarrelled violently 
which pieces they would have; and at last the boys 
took up the thing, as boys should do, "practically," 
^ Isaiah xl, 12. 



LIFE AND ITS ARTS ^07 

and fought in the flower-beds till there was hardly a 
flower left standing; then they trampled down each 
other's bits of the garden out of spite ; and the girls cried 
till they could cry no more ; and so they all lay down at 
last breathless in the ruin, and waited for the time 
when they were to be taken home in the evening.^ 

Meanwhile, the children in the house had been 
making themselves happy also in their manner. For 
them, there had been provided every kind of in-door 
pleasure : there was music for them to dance to ; and the 
hbrary was open, with all manner of amusing books; 
and there was a museum full of the most curious shells, 
and animals, and birds; and there was a workshop, 
with lathes and carpenters' tools, for the ingenious 
boys; and there were pretty fantastic dresses, for the 
girls to dress in ; and there were microscopes, and 
kaleidoscopes; and whatever toys a child could fancy; 
and a table, in the dining-room, loaded with everything 
nice to eat. 

But, in the midst of all this, it struck two or three of 
the more "practical" children, that they would like 
some of the brass-headed nails that studded the chairs ; 
and so they set to work to pull them out. Presently, 
the others, who were reading, or looking at shells, took 
a fancy to do the like ; and, in a little while, all the chil- 
dren, nearly, were spraining their fingers, in pulling 
out brass-headed nails. With all that they could pull 
out, they were not satisfied; and then, everybody 
wanted some of somebody else's. And at last, the really 
practical and sensible ones declared, that nothing was 
of any real consequence, that afternoon, except to get 

^ I have sometimes been asked what this means. I intended it 
to set forth the wisdom of men in war contending for kingdoms, 
and what follows to set forth their wisdom in peace, conteiuding 
for wealth. [Ruskin.] 



308 LIFE AND ITS ARTS 

plenty of brass-headed nails; and that the books, and 
the cakes, and the microscopes were of no use at all in 
themselves, but only, if they could be exchanged for 
nail-heads. And at last they began to fight for nail- 
heads, as the others fought for the bits of garden. Only 
here and there, a despised one shrank away into a 
corner, and tried to get a little quiet with a book, in 
the midst of the noise ; but all the practical ones thought 
of nothing else but counting nail-heads all the after- 
noon — even though they knew they would not be 
allowed to carry so much as one brass knob away with 
them. But no — it was — "who has most nails? I 
have a hundred, and you have fifty; or, I have a thou- 
sand, and you have two. I must have as many as you 
before I leave the house, or I cannot possibly go home^ 
in peace." At last, they made so much noise that I 
awoke, and thought to myself, " What a false dream 
that is, of children I" The child is the father of the 
man ; * and wiser. Children never do such foolish 
things. Only men do. 

But there is yet one last class of persons to be in- 
terrogated. The wise religious men we have asked in 
vain; the wise contemplative men, in vain; the wise 
worldly men, in vain. But there is another group yet. 
In the midst of this vanity of empty religion — of 
tragic contemplation — of wrathful and wretched am- 
bition, and dispute for dust, there is yet one great 
group of persons, by whom all these disputers live 
— the persons who have determined, or have had 
it by a beneficent Providence determined for them, 
that they will do something useful ; that whatever may 
be prepared for them hereafter, or happen to them here, 
they will, at least, deserve the food that God gives them 

^ See Wordsworth's poem, My heart leaps up when I behold. 



LIFE AND ITS ARTS 309 

by winning it honourably: and that, however fallen 
from the purity, or far from the peace, of Eden, they 
will carry out the duty of human dominion, though they 
have lost its felicity ; and dress and keep the wilderness,^ 
though they no more can dress or keep the garden. 

These, — hewers of wood, and drawers of water, ^ — 
these, bent uiader burdens, or torn of scourges — these, 
that dig and weave — that plant and build ; workers 
in wood, and in marble, and in iron — by whom all 
food, clothing, habitation, furniture, and means of de- 
light are produced, for themselves, and for all men 
beside; men, whose deeds are good, though their words 
may be few; men, whose lives are serviceable, be they 
never so short, and worthy of honour, be they never 
so humble ; — from these, surely, at least, we may re- 
ceive some clear message of teaching; and pierce, for 
an instant, into the mystery of life, and of its arts. 

Yes ; from these, at last, we do receive a lesson. But I 
grieve to say, or rather — for that is the deeper truth 
of the matter — I rejoice to say — this message of 
theirs can only be received by joining them — not by 
thinking about them. 

You sent for me to talk to you of art; and I have 

obeyed you in coming. But the main thing I have to 

tell you is, — that art must not be talked about. The 

fact that there is talk about it at all, signifies that it 

is ill done, or cannot be done. No true painter ever 

speaks, or ever has spoken, much of his art. The 

greatest speak nothing. Even Reynolds is no exception, 

for he wrote of all that he could not himself do,* and 

was utterly silent respecting all that he himself did. 

^ See Genesis ii, 15, and the opening lines of the first selection 
in this volume. 
^ Joshua ix, 21. 
' In his Discourses on Art. Cf. pp. 24 ff. above. 



310 LIFE AND ITS ARTS 

The moment a man can really do his work he be- 
comes speechless about it. All words become idle to 
him — all theories. 

Does a bird need to theorize about building its nest, 
or boast of it when built ? All good work is essentially 
done that way — without hesitation, without diflBculty, 
without boasting; and in the doers of the best, there is 
an inner and involuntary power which approximates 
literally to the instinct of an animal — nay, I am certain 
that in the most perfect human artists, reason does not 
supersede instinct, but is added to an instinct as much 
more divine than that of the lower animals as the hu- 
man body is more beautiful than theirs; that a great 
singer sings not with less instinct than the nightingale, 
but with more — only more various, applicable, and 
governable ; that a great architect does not build with 
less instinct than the beaver or the bee, but with more 
— with an innate cunning of proportion that embraces 
all beauty, and a divine ingenuity of skill that improvises 
all construction. But be that as it may — be the instinct 
less or more than that of inferior animals — like or un- 
like theirs, still the human art is dependent on that first, 
and then upon an amount of practice, of science, — and 
of imagination disciplined by thought, which the true 
possessor of it knows to be incommunicable, and the 
true critic of it, inexplicable, except through long pro- 
cess of laborious years. That journey of life's conquest, 
in which hills over hills, and Alps on Alps arose, and 
sank, — do you think you can make another trace it 
painlessly, by talking ? Why, you cannot even carry us 
up an Alp, by talking. You can guide us up it, step by 
step, no otherwise — even so, best silently. You girls, 
who have been among the hills, know how the bad 
guide chatters and gesticulates, and it is "put your 



LIFE AND ITS ARTS 311 

foot here"; and "mind how you balance yourself 
there"; but the good guide walks on quietly, without 
a word, only with his eyes on you when need is, and 
his arm like an iron bar, if need be. 

In that slow way, also, art can be taught — if you 
have faith in your guide, and will let his arm be to you 
as an iron bar when need is. But in what teacher of 
art have you such faith ? Certainly not in me ; for, as I 
told you at first, I know well enough it is only because 
you think I can talk, not because you think I know 
my business, that you let me speak to you at all. If I 
were to tell you anything that seemed to you strange, 
you would not beheve it, and yet it would only be in 
telling you strange things that I could be of use to you. 
I could be of great use to you — infinite use — with 
brief saying, if you would believe it ; but you would not, 
just because the thing that would be of real use would 
displease you. You are all wild, for instance, with ad- 
miration of Gustave Dore. Well, suppose I were to 
tell you, in the strongest terms I could use, that Gustave 
Dore's art was bad — bad, not in weakness, — not in 
failure, — but bad with dreadful power — the power 
of the Furies and the Harpies mingled, enraging, and 
polluting ; that so long as you looked at it, no perception 
of pure or beautiful art was possible for you. Suppose 
I were to tell you that ! What would be the use ? Would 
you look at Gustave Dore less } Rather, more, I fancy. 
On the other hand, I could soon put you into good 
humour with me, if I chose. I know well enough 
what you like, and how to praise it to your better liking. 
I could talk to you about moonlight, and twilight, and 
spring flowers, and autumn leaves, and the Madonnas 
of Raphael — how motherly ! and the Sibyls of Michael 
Angelo — how majestic ! and the Saints of Angelico — 



312 LIFE AND ITS ARTS 

how pious ! and the Cherubs of Correggio — how de- 
licious ! Old as I am, I could play you a tune on the 
harp yet, that you would dance to. But neither you 
nor I should be a bit the better or wiser ; or, if we were, 
our increased wisdom could be of no practical effect. 
For, indeed, the arts, as regards teachableness, differ 
from the sciences also in this, that their power is 
founded not merely on facts which can be communi- 
cated, but on dispositions which require to be created. 
Art is neither to be achieved by effort of thinking, nor 
explained by accuracy of speaking. It is the instinctive 
and necessary result of power, which can only be de- 
veloped through the mind of successive generations, 
and which finally burst into life under social conditions 
^ as slow of growth as the faculties they regulate. Whole 
seras of mighty history are summed, and the passions 
of dead myriads are concentrated, in the existence of a 
noble art; and if that noble art were among us, we 
should feel it and rejoice ; not caring in the least to hear 
lectures on it ; and since it is not among us, be assured 
we have to go back to the root of it, or, at least, to the 
place where the stock of it is yet alive, and the branches 
began to die. 

And now, may I have your pardon for pointing out, 
partly with reference to matters which are at this time 
of greater moment than the arts — that if we under- 
took such recession to the vital germ of national arts 
that have decayed, we should find a more singular 
arrest of their power in Ireland than in any other Euro- 
pean country. For in the eighth century Ireland pos- 
sessed a school of art in her manuscripts and sculpture, 
which, in many of its qualities — apparently in all es- 
ential qualities of decorative invention — was quite 
without rival; seeming as if it might have advanced 



LIFE AND ITS ARTS 313 

to the highest triumphs in architecture and in painting. 
But there was one fatal flaw in its nature, by which 
it was stayed, and stayed with a conspicuousness of 
pause to which there is no parallel : so that, long ago, 
in tracing the progress of European schools from in- 
fancy to strength, I chose for the students of Kensington, 
in a lecture since published, two characteristic examples 
of early art, of equal skill; but in the one case, skill 
which was progressive — in the other, skill which 
was at pause. In the one case, it was work receptive 
of correction — hungry for correction ; and in the 
other, work which inherently rejected correction. I 
chose for them a corrigible Eve, and an incorrigible 
Angel, and I grieve to say ^ that the incorrigible Angel 
was also an Irish angel! 

And the fatal difference lay wholly in this. In both 
pieces of art there was an equal falling short of the 
needs of fact; but the Lombardic Eve knew she was in 
the wrong, and the Irish Angel thought himself all right. 
The eager Lombardic sculptor, though firmly insisting 
on his childish idea, yet showed in the irregular broken 
touches of the features, and the imperfect struggle for 
softer lines in the form, a perception of beauty and law 
that he could not render; there was the strain of effort, 
under conscious imperfection, in every line. But the 
Irish missal-painter had drawn his angel with no sense 
of failure, in happy complacency, and put red dots into 
the palms of each hand, and rounded the eyes into per- 
fect circles, and, I regret to say, left the mouth out alto- 
gether, with perfect satisfaction to himself. 

May I without offence ask you to consider whether 
this mode of arrest in ancient Irish art may not be in- 
dicative of points of character which even yet, in some 
1 See The Two Paths, §§ 28 ef seq. [Ruskin.] 



314 LIFE AND ITS ARTS 

measure, arrest your national power? I have seen 
much of Irish character, and have watched it closely, 
for I have also much loved it. And I think the form of 
failure to which it is most liable is this, — that being 
generous-hearted, and wholly intending always to do 
right, it does not attend to the external laws of right, 
but thinks it must necessarily do right because it means 
to do so, and therefore does wrong without finding it 
out; and then, when the consequences of its wrong 
come upon it, or upon others connected with it, it can- 
not conceive that the wrong is in any wise of its causing 
or of its doing, but flies into wrath, and a strange agony 
of desire for justice, as feeling itself wholly innocent, 
which leads it farther astray, until there is nothing that 
it is not capable of doing with a good conscience. 

But mind, I do not mean to say that, in past or pre- 
sent relations between Ireland and England, you have 
been wrong, and we right. Far from that, I believe 
that in all great questions of principle, and in all details 
of administration of law, you have been usually right, 
and we wrong; sometimes in misunderstanding you, 
sometimes in resolute iniquity to you. Nevertheless, 
in all disputes between states, though the strongest is 
nearly always mainly in the wrong, the weaker is often 
so in a minor degree ; and I think we sometimes admit 
the possibility of our being in error, and you never do.^ 

And now, returning to the broader question, what 
these arts and labours of life have to teach us of its mys- 
tery, this is the first of their lessons — that the more 
beautiful the art, the more it is essentially the work of 
people who/eeZ themselves wrong ; — who are striving 

* References mainly to the Irish Land Question, on which Rus- 
kin agreed with Mill and Gladstone in advocating the establish- 
ment of a peasant-proprietorship in Ireland. 



LIFE AND ITS ARTS 315 

for the fulfilment of a law, and the grasp of a loveliness, 
which they have not yet attained, which they feel even 
farther and farther from attaining the more they strive 
for it. And yet, in still deeper sense, it is the work of 
people who know also that they are right. The very 
sense of inevitable error from their purpose marks the 
perfectness of that purpose, and the continued sense of 
failure arises from the continued opening of the eyes 
more clearly to all the sacredest laws of truth. 

This is one lesson. The second is a very plain, and 
greatly precious one : namely, — that whenever the 
arts and labours of life are fulfilled in this spirit of 
striving against misrule, and doing whatever we have 
to do, honourably and perfectly, they invariably bring 
happiness, as much as seems possible to the nature 
of man. In all other paths by which that happiness is 
pursued there is disappointment, or destruction : for 
ambition and for passion there is no rest — no fruition ; 
the fairest pleasures of youth perish in a darkness 
greater than their past light ; and the loftiest and purest 
love too often does but inflame the cloud of life with 
endless fire of pain. But, ascending from lowest to ^ 
highest, through every scale of human industry, that 
industry worthily followed, gives peace. Ask the la- 
bourer in the field, at the forge, or in the mine ; ask the 
patient, delicate-fingered artisan, or the strong-armed, 
fiery-hearted worker in bronze, and in marble, and in 
the colours of light; and none of these, who are true 
workmen, will ever tell you, that they have found the 
law of heaven an unkind one — that in the sweat of 
their face they should eat bread, till they return to the 
ground ; ^ nor that they ever found it an unrewarded 
obedience, if, indeed, it was rendered faithfully to the 
^ Genesis iii, 19. 



316 LIFE AND ITS ARTS 

command ^ " Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do — 
do it with thy might." ^ 

These are the two great and constant lessons which 
our labourers teach us of the mystery of life. But there 
is another, and a sadder one, which they cannot teach 
us, which we must read on their tombstones. 

" Do it with thy might." There have been myriads 
upon myriads of human creatures who have obeyed 
this law — who have put every breath and nerve of 
their being into its toil — who have devoted every hour, 
and exhausted every faculty — who have bequeathed 
their unaccomplished thoughts at death — who, being 
dead, have yet spoken,^ by majesty of memory, and 
strength of example. And, at last, what has all this 
"Might" of humanity accomplished, in six thousand 
years of labour and sorrow ? What has it done ? Take 
the three chief occupations and arts of men, one by one, 
and count their achievements. Begin with the first — 
the lord of them all — Agriculture. Six thousand years 
have passed since we were sent to till the ground, from 
which we were taken. How much of it is tilled .^ How 
much of that which is, wisely or well.^ In the very 
centre and chief garden of Europe — where the two 
forms of parent Christianity have had their fortresses 

— where the noble Catholics of the Forest Cantons, 
and the noble Protestants of the Vaudois valleys, have 
maintained, for dateless ages, their faiths and liberties 

— there the unchecked Alpine rivers yet run wild in 
devastation; and the marshes, which a few hundred 
men could redeem with a year's labour, still blast 
their helpless inhabitants into fevered idiotism. That 
is so, in the centre of Europe ! While, on the near coast 
of Africa, once the Garden of the Hesperides, an Arab 

^ Ecclesiasies ix, 10. ^ Hebrews xi, 4. 



LIFE AND ITS ARTS 317 

woman, but a few sunsets since, ate her child, for fam- 
ine. And, with all the treasures of the East at our feet, 
we, in our own dominion, could not find a few grains 
of rice, for a people that asked of us no more ; but stood 
by, and saw five hundred thousand of them perish of 
hunger.^ 

Then, after agriculture, the art of kings, take the 
next head of human arts — weaving ; the art of queens, 
honoured of all noble Heathen women, in the person of 
their virgin goddess ^ — honoured of all Hebrew wo- 
men, by the word of their wisest king — "She layeth 
her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the dis- 
taff; she stretcheth out her hand to the poor. She is not 
afraid of the snow for her household, for all her house- 
hold are clothed with scarlet. She maketh herself cover- 
ing of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple. She 
maketh fine linen, and selleth it, and delivereth girdles 
unto the merchant." ^ What have we done in all these 
thousands of years with this bright art of Greek maid 
and Christian matron ? Six thousand years of weaving, 
and have we learned to weave ? Might not every naked 
wall have been purple with tapestry, and every feeble 
breast fenced with sweet colours from the cold ? What 
have we done ? Our fingers are too few, it seems, to 
twist together some poor covering for our bodies. We 
set our streams to work for us, and choke the air with 
fire, to turn our spinning-wheels — and, — are we yet 
clothed? Are not the streets of the capitals of Europe 
foul with the sale of cast clouts and rotten rags ? ^ Is not 
the beauty of your sweet children left in wretchedness 
of disgrace, while, with better honour, nature clothes 

^ During the famine in the Indian province of Orissa. 

2 Athena, goddess of weaving. 

3 Proverbs xxxi, 19-22, 24. 
^ Jeremiah xxxviii, 11. 



318 LIFE AND ITS ARTS 

the brood of the bird in its nest, and the suckling of the 
wolf in her den? And does not every winter's snow 
robe what you have not robed, and shroud what you 
have not shrouded ; and every winter's wind bear up to 
heaven its wasted souls, to witness against you here- 
after, by the voice of their Christ, — "I was naked, 
and ye clothed me not " ? ^ 

Lastly — take the Art of Building — the strongest 
— proudest — most orderly — most enduring of the 
arts of man ; that of which the produce is in the surest 
manner accumulative, and need not perish, or be re- 
placed ; but if once well done, will stand more strongly 
than the unbalanced rocks — more prevalently than 
the crumbling hills. The art which is associated with 
all civic pride and sacred principle; with which men 
record their power — satisfy their enthusiasm — make 
sure their defence — define and make dear their habi- 
tation. And in six thousand years of building, what 
have we done ? Of the greater part of all that skill and 
strength, no vestige is left, but fallen stones, that en- 
cumber the fields and impede the streams. But, from 
this waste of disorder, and of time, and of rage, what 
is left to us? Constructive and progressive creatures 
that we are, with ruling brains, and forming hands, 
capable of fellowship, and thirsting for fame, can we 
not contend, in comfort, with the insects of the forest, 
or, in achievement, with the worm of the sea? The 
white surf rages in vain against the ramparts built by 
poor atoms of scarcely nascent life ; but only ridges of 
formless ruin mark the places where once dwelt our 
noblest multitudes. The ant and the moth have cells 
for each of their young, but our little ones lie in fester- 
ing heaps, in homes that consume them like graves; 
* Matthew xxv, 43. 



LIFE AND ITS ARTS 319 

and night by night, from the corners of our streets, 
rises up the cry of the homeless — "I was a stranger, 
and ye took me not in." ^ 

Must it be always thus? Is our life for ever to 
be without profit — without possession ? Shall the 
strength of its generations be as barren as death ; or cast 
away their labour, as the wild fig-tree casts her un- 
timely figs ? ^ Is it all a dream then — the desire of the 
eyes and the pride of life — or, if it be, might we not 
live in nobler dream than this? The poets and pro- 
phets, the wise men, and the scribes, though they have 
told us nothing about a life to come, have told us much 
about the life that is now. They have had — they also, 
— their dreams, and we have laughed at them. They 
have dreamed of mercy, and of justice; they have 
dreamed of peace and good-will; they have dreamed 
of labour undisappointed, and of rest undisturbed; 
they have dreamed of fulness in harvest, and overflow- 
ing in store; they have dreamed of wisdom in council, 
and of providence in law; of gladness of parents, and 
strength of children, and glory of grey hairs. And at 
these visions of theirs we have mocked, and held them 
for idle and vain, unreal and unaccomplishable. What 
have we accomplished with our realities ? Is this what 
has come of our worldly wisdom, tried against their 
folly? this, our mightiest possible, against their im- 
potent ideal? or, have we only wandered among the 
spectra of a baser felicity, and chased phantoms of the 
tombs, instead of visions of the Almighty; and walked 
after the imaginations of our evil hearts,^ instead of 
after the counsels of Eternity, until our lives — not in 
the likeness of the cloud of heaven, but of the smoke of 

^ Matthew xxv, 43. ^ Revelation vi, 13. 

^ Jeremiah xi, 8. \ 



V 



320 LIFE AND ITS ARTS 

hell — have become " as a vapour, that appeareth for 
a little time, and then vanisheth away " ? ^ 

Does it vanish then ? Are you sure of that ? — sure, 
that the nothingness of the grave will be a rest from 
this troubled nothingness ; and that the coiling shadow, 
which disquiets itself in vain, cannot change into the 
smoke of the torment that ascends for ever? ^ Will 
any answer that they are sure of it, and that there is no 
fear, nor hope, nor desire, nor labour, whither they go ? ^ 
Be it so : will you not, then, make as sure of the Life 
that now is, as you are of the Death that is to come ? 
Your hearts are wholly in this world — will you not 
give them to it wisely, as well as perfectly ? And see, 
first of all, that you have hearts, and sound hearts, too, 
to give. Because you have no heaven to look for, is that 
any reason that you should remain ignorant of this won- 
derful and infinite earth, which is firmly and instantly 
given you in possession ? Although your days are num- 
bered, and the following darkness sure, is it necessary 
that you should share the degradation of the brute, 
because you are condemned to its mortality; or live 
the life of the moth, and of the worm, because you are 
to companion them in the dust ? Not so ; we may have 
but a few thousands of days to spend, perhaps hundreds 
only — perhaps tens ; nay, the longest of our time and 
best, looked back on, will be but as a moment, as the 
twinkling of an eye; still we are men, not insects; we 
are living spirits, not passing clouds. "He maketh the 
winds His messengers; the momentary fire. His minis- 
ter " ; ^ and shall we do less than these ? Let us do the 
work of men while we bear the form of them ; and, as 

* James iv, 14. 

' Psalms xxxix, 6 and Revelation xiv, 11. 
^ Ecclesiastes ix, 10. 

* Psalms civ, 4. 



LIFE AND ITS ARTS 321 

we snatch our narrow portion of time out of Eternity, 
snatch also our narrow inheritance of passion out of 
ImmortaHty — even though our hves be as a vapour, 
that appeareth for a Httle time, and then vanisheth 
away. 

But there are some of you who believe not this — 
who think this cloud of life has no such close — that 
it is to float, revealed and illumined, upon the floor of 
heaven, in the day when He cometh with clouds, and 
every eye shall see Him.^ Some day, you believe, within 
these five, or ten, or twenty years, for every one of us 
the judgment will be set, and the books opened.^ If 
that be true, far more than that must be true. Is there 
but one day of judgment ? Why, for us every day is a day 
of judgment — every day is a Dies Irse,^ and writes 
its irrevocable verdict in the flame of its West. Think 
you that judgment waits till the doors of the grave are 
opened ? It waits at the doors of your houses — it waits 
at the corners of your streets; we are in the midst of 
judgment — the insects that we crush are our judges — 
the moments that we fret away are our judges — the 
elements that feed us, judge, as they minister — and 
the pleasures that deceive us, judge as they indulge. 
Let us, for our lives, do the work of Men while we bear 
the form of them, if indeed those lives are Not as a 
vapour, and do Not vanish away. 

" The work of men " — and what is that ? Well, we 
may any of us know very quickly, on the condition of 

^ Revelation i, 7. ^ Daniel vii, 10. 

3 Dies Irce, the name generally given (from the opening words) 
to the most famous of the medieval hymns, usually ascribed to 
the Franciscan Thomas of Celano (died c. 1255). It is composed in 
triplets of rhyming trochaic tetrameters, and describes the Last Judg- 
ment in language of magnificent grandeur, passing into a plain- 
tive plea for the souls of the dead. 



322 LIFE AND ITS ARTS 

being wholly ready to do it. But many of us are for the 
most part thinking, not of what we are to do, but of 
what we are to get ; and the best of us are sunk into the 
sin of Ananias,^ and it is a mortal one — we want to 
keep back part of the price; and we continually talk 
of taking up our cross, as if the only harm in a cross 
was the weight of it — as if it was only a thing to be 
carried, instead of to be — crucified upon. " They that 
are His have crucified the flesh, with the affections and 
lusts." ^ Does that mean, think you, that in time of 
national distress, of religious trial, of crisis for every 
interest and hope of humanity — none of us will cease 
jesting, none cease idling, none put themselves to any 
wholesome work, none take so much as a tag of lace 
off their footmen's coats, to save the world .^ Or does it 
rather mean, that they are ready to leave houses, lands, 
and kindreds — yes, and life, if need be ? Life ! — 
some of us are ready enough to throw that away, joy- 
less as we have made it. But " station in Life " — how 
many of us are ready to quit that ? Is it not always the 
great objection, where there is question of finding 
something useful to do — " We cannot leave our sta- 
tions in Life " ? 

Those of us who really cannot — that is to say, who 
can only maintain themselves by continuing in some 
business or salaried office, have already something to 
do ; and all that they have to see to is, that they do it 
honestly and with all their might. But with most people 
who use that apology, " remaining in the station of life 
to which Providence has called them " means keeping 
all the carriages, and all the footmen and large houses 
they can possibly pay for; and, once for all, I say that 
if ever Providence did put them into stations of that 
» Ads V, 1, 2. 2 Galatians v. 24. 



LIFE AND ITS ARTS 323 

sort — which is not at all a matter of certainty — Pro- 
vidence is just now very distinctly calling them out 
again. Levi's station in life was the receipt of custom ; 
and Peter's, the shore of Galilee; and Paul's, the ante- 
chambers of the High Priest, — which " station in 
life" each had to leave, with brief notice. 

And, whatever our station in life may be, at this 
crisis, those of us who mean to fulfil our duty ought first 
to live on as little as we can; and, secondly, to do all 
the wholesome work for it we can, and to spend all we 
can spare in doing all the sure good we can. 

And sure good is, first in feeding people, then in 
dressing people, then in lodging people, and lastly in 
rightly pleasing people, with arts, or sciences, or any 
other subject of thought. 

I say first in feeding; and, once for all, do not let 
yourselves be deceived by any of the common talk of 
"indiscriminate charity." The order to us is not to 
feed the deserving hungry, nor the industrious hungry, 
nor the amiable and well-intentioned hungry, but sim- 
ply to feed the hungry.^ It is quite true, infallibly true, 
that if any man will not work, neither should he eat ^ — • 
think of that, and every time you sit down to your din- 
ner, ladies and gentlemen, say solemnly, before you ask 
a blessing, "How much work have I done to-day for 
my dinner ? " But the proper way to enforce that order 
on those below you, as well as on yourselves, is not to 
leave vagabonds and honest people to starve together, 
but very distinctly to discern and seize your vagabond ; 
and shut your vagabond up out of honest people's way, 
and very sternly then see that, until he has worked, he 
does not eat. But the first thing is to be sure you have 
the food to give ; and, therefore, to enforce the organiza- 
* Isaiah Iviii, 7. ' 2 Thessdonians iii, 10. 



324 LIFE AND ITS ARTS 

tion of vast activities in agriculture and in commerce, 
for the production of the wholesomest food, and pro- 
per storing and distribution of it, so that no famine 
shall any more be possible among civilized beings. 
There is plenty of work in this business alone, and 
at once, for any number of people who like to engage 
in it. 

Secondly, dressing people — that is to say, urging 
every one within reach of your influence to be always 
neat and clean, and giving them means of being so. In 
so far as they absolutely refuse, you must give up the 
effort with respect to them, only taking care that no 
children within your sphere of influence shall any more 
be brought up with such habits ; and that every person 
who is willing to dress with propriety shall have encour- 
agement to do so. And the first absolutely necessary step 
towards this is the gradual adoption of a consistent dress 
for different ranks of persons, so that their rank shall be 
known by their dress ; and the restriction of the changes 
of fashion within certain limits. All which appears 
for the present quite impossible ; but it is only so far 
even difficult as it is difficult to conquer our vanity, 
frivolity, and desire to appear what we are not. And it 
is not, nor ever shall be, creed of mine, that these mean 
and shallow vices are unconquerable by Christian 
women. 

And then, thirdly, lodging people, which you may 
think should have been put first, but I put it third, 
because we must feed and clothe people where we find 
them, and lodge them afterwards. And providing lodg- 
ment for them means a great deal of vigorous legisla- 
tion, and cutting down of vested interests that stand in 
the way, and after that, or before that, so far as we can 
get it, thorough sanitary and remedial action in the 



LIFE AND ITS ARTS 325 

houses that we have; and then the building of more, 
strongly, beautifully, and in groups of limited extent, 
kept in proportion to their streams, and walled round, 
so that there may be no festering and wretched suburb 
anywhere, but clean and busy street within, and the 
open country without, with a belt of beautiful garden 
and orchard round the walls, so that from any part of 
the city perfectly fresh air and grass, and the sight of 
far horizon, might be reachable in a few minutes' walk. 
This is the final aim; but in immediate action every 
minor and possible good to be instantly done, when, 
and as, we can ; roofs mended that have holes in them 
— fences patched that have gaps in them — walls but- 
tressed that totter — and floors propped that shake ; 
cleanliness and order enforced with our own hands and 
eyes, till we are breathless, every day. And all the fine 
arts will healthily follow. I myself have washed a flight 
of stone stairs all down, with bucket and broom, in a 
Savoy inn, where they had n't washed their stairs since 
they first went up them; and I never made a better 
sketch than that afternoon. 

These, then, are the three first needs of civilized life; 
and the law for every Christian man and woman is, 
that they shall be in direct service towards one of these 
three needs, as far as is consistent with their own special 
occupation, and if they have no special business, then 
wholly in one of these services. And out of such exertion 
in plain duty all other good will come ; for in this direct 
contention with material evil, you will find out the real 
nature of all evil ; you will discern by the various kinds 
of resistance, what is really the fault and main antago- 
nism to good ; also you will find the most unexpected 
helps and profound lessons given, and truths will come 
thus down to us which the speculation of all our lives 



326 LIFE AND ITS ARTS 

would never have raised us up to. You will find nearly 
every educational problem solved, as soon as you truly 
want to do something; everybody will become of use 
in their own fittest way, and will learn what is best for 
them to know in that use. Competitive examination 
will then, and not till then, be wholesome, because it 
will be daily, and calm, and in practice; and on these 
familiar arts, and minute, but certain and serviceable 
knowledges, will be surely edified and sustained the 
greater arts and splendid theoretical sciences. 

But much more than this. On such holy and simple 
practice will be founded, indeed, at last, an infallible 
religion. The greatest of all the mysteries of life, and 
the most terrible, is the corruption of even the sincerest 
religion, which is not daily founded on rational, effec- 
tive, humble, and helpful action. Helpful action, ob- 
serve! for there is just one law, which obeyed, keeps 
all religions pure — forgotten, makes them all false. 
Whenever in any religious faith, dark or bright, we 
allow our minds to dwell upon the points in which we 
differ from other people, we are wrong, and in the 
devil's power. That is the essence of the Pharisee's 
thanksgiving — " Lord, I thank Thee that I am not as 
other men are." ^ At every moment of our lives we 
should be trying to find out, not in what we differ with 
other people, but in what we agree with them; and the 
moment we find we can agree as to anything that should 
be done, kind or good, (and who but fools could n't ?) 
then do it ; push at it together : you can't quarrel in a 
side-by-side push ; but the moment that even the best 
men stop pushing, and begin talking, they mistake 
their pugnacity for piety, and it's all over. I will not 
speak of the crimes which in past times have been com- 
* Luke xviii, 11. 



LIFE AND ITS ARTS 327 

mitted in the name of Christ, nor of the foIHes which are 
at this hour held to be consistent with obedience to 
Him ; but I will speak of the morbid corruption and 
waste of vital power in religious sentiment, by which 
the pure strength of that which should be the guiding 
soul of every nation, the splendour of its youthful man- 
hood, and spotless light of its maidenhood, is averted or 
cast away. You may see continually girls who have 
never been taught to do a single useful thing thor- 
oughly ; who cannot sew, who cannot cook, who cannot 
cast an account, nor prepare a medicine, whose whole 
life has been passed either in play or in pride ; you will 
find girls like these, when they are earnest-hearted, cast 
all their innate passion of religious spirit, which was 
meant by God to support them through the irksome- 
ness of daily toil, into grievous and vain meditation 
over the meaning of the great Book, of which no syl- 
lable was ever yet to be understood but through a deed ; 
all the instinctive wisdom and mercy of their woman- 
hood made vain, and the glory of their pure con- 
sciences warped into fruitless agony concerning ques- 
tions which the laws of common serviceable life would 
have either solved for them in an instant, or kept out 
of their way. Give such a girl any true work that will 
make her active in the dawn, and weary at night, with 
the consciousness that her fellow-creatures have in- 
deed been the better for her day, and the powerless 
sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform itself into a 
majesty of radiant and beneficent peace. 

So with our youths. We once taught them to make 
Latin verses, and called them educated ; now we teach 
them to leap and to row, to hit a ball with a bat, and 
call them educated. Can they plough, can they sow, 
can they plant at the right time, or build with a st^^ady 



828 LIFE AND ITS ARTS 

hand ? Is it the effort of their Hves to be chaste, 
knightly, faithful, holy in thought, lovely in word and 
deed ? Indeed it is, with some, nay with many, and 
the strength of England is in them, and the hope; but 
we have to turn their courage from the toil of war to the 
toil of mercy ; and their intellect from dispute of words 
to discernment of things; and their knighthood from 
the errantry of adventure to the state and fidelity of 
a kingly power. And then, indeed, shall abide, for 
them, and for us, an incorruptible felicity, and an in- 
fallible religion ; shall abide for us Faith, no more to be 
assailed by temptation, no more to be defended by 
wrath and by fear ; — shall abide with us Hope, no 
more to be quenched by the years that overwhelm, or 
made ashamed by the shadows that betray : — shall 
abide for us, and with us, the greatest of these; the 
abiding will, the abiding name of our Father. For the 
greatest of these is Charity.^ 

^ 1 Corinthians xiii, 13. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

Editions. The standard edition of Ruskin is that of Cook 
and Wedderburn in 34 volumes. Most of his better- 
known works may be had in cheap and convenient 
forms. 

The best Hves are: 

CoLLiNGWOOD, W. G. The Life and Work of John Ruskin. 

Houghton Mifflin Company, 1893. (2 vols.) The 

standard biography. 
Harrison, F. John Ruskin (English Men of Letters). 

The Macmillan Company, 1902. A short and readable 

biography. 



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